Backlash against politician who said Germans wouldn’t want black footballer Jerome Boateng as a neighbour

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman has condemned a right-wing politician for his “despicable” suggestion that nobody would want to have German national soccer player Jerome Boateng, whose father is Ghanaian, as a neighbour.

The reported comments by Alexander Gauland, deputy head of the Alternative for Germany party, or AfD, prompted a backlash across the rest of the political spectrum and a video by soccer authorities promoting the national squad’s diversity. The AfD’s national leader, Frauke Petry, apologised for the comments ahead of next month’s Euro 2016 championship, where the Bayern Munich first-team regular is set to feature.

“This is a despicable and sad statement,” Steffen Seibert, Merkel’s chief spokesman, told reporters in Berlin on Monday. Fans gave a “wonderful” response by showing support for Berlin-born Boateng during a national team game on Sunday, he said.

Alternative for Germany, founded as an anti-euro party in 2013, has won seats in eight of Germany’s 16 state assemblies, boosted by voters dissatisfied with how Merkel’s coalition handled last year’s record influx of refugees. While AfD doesn’t have seats in the federal parliament, national polls put its support at as much as 15 per cent.

Gauland said that while people might like him as a player, “they don’t want someone like Boateng as a neighbour”, according to an interview with Sunday newspaper F rankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung. He told ARD television he hadn’t singled out Boateng and only meant to say that “many people think having foreigners in their neighbourhood isn’t ideal.”

Petry, who was quoted by Stern magazine in April as saying she won’t tolerate racism in the AfD, distanced herself from Gauland, a former member of Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union. In a statement quoted by broadcaster N-TV, she apologized to Boateng for the “impression” created by Gauland.