Giorgos Katidis maintains he didn’t know what the Nazi salute meant, and was merely pointing at a teammate in the stands. (Hitler.) According to the Guardian, he described himself as “not a fascist” on Twitter before deleting his account.
Katidis’ coach Ewald Lienen (incidentally: a German) defended his player’s total lack of self-awareness, historical knowledge, and general brainpower, saying it was very likely that this adult human being who had grown up in the world had no idea what a Nazi salute looked like or stood for.
What “most likely” happened, according to Lienen, is that Katidis saw a picture of the move on the Internet one night while performing a Google Image search for “cool moves to do —no context,” then blindly copied it.
