Ivory Coast coach slams 'racist' comments made by former Germany star Bastian Schweinsteiger

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Ivory Coast coach Emerse Faé slammed what he considered were racist comments made about his team by former Germany player Bastian Schweinsteiger.

Schweinsteiger made the comments on German broadcaster ARD before Germany played Ivory Coast last weekend, when he spoke about what the German players could expect from their opponents.

“A bit African football, a bit unorthodox, a bit wild, a bit perhaps also not so conditioned by tactics. We have to be prepared for it to be unpredictable,” Schweinsteiger said.

Faé led Ivory Coast into the World Cup knockout round for the first time in national team history with a 2-0 win over Curaçao on Thursday.

Faé said after the win he hoped Schweinsteiger had made a “clumsy statement that's not necessarily reflective of what's in his life.”

“We could call it racist, if we were calling a spade a spade,” Faé said.

Schweinsteiger’s comments were criticized earlier this week as playing into racist stereotypes.

Sports commentator Patrick Schnitzler wrote on Instagram of “racist prejudices that we are all passing on unnoticed,” and journalist Philipp Awounou, who’s Black, wrote in Der Spiegel magazine that the characterizations played on old racist tropes rooted in colonialism. Awounou said he did not think Schweinsteiger is racist.

Faé said the West African team uses smarts and strategy to win just as much as physical toughness to advance this far in the World Cup. He questioned if Schweinsteiger was trying “to create a buzz” in his broadcast career by leaning on outdated racial tropes.

“When I heard his comment, I was disappointed,” Faé said. “Disappointed in the man. It is odd he would speak that way."

See more of AP’s World Cup coverage here

Referee Francois Letexier gestures to Ivory Coast head coach Emerse Fae during the World Cup Group E soccer match between Ivory Coast and Ecuador in Philadelphia, Sunday, June 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Petr David Josek)

Ivory Coast head coach Emerse Fae during the World Cup Group E soccer match between Ivory Coast and Ecuador in Philadelphia, Sunday, June 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

Ivory Coast head coach Emerse Fae speaks during a press conference on the eve of the team's World Cup soccer match against Germany, Friday, June 19, 2026, in Toronto. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)

Ivory Coast head coach Emerse Fae watches a training session on the eve of the team's World Cup soccer match against Germany, Friday, June 19, 2026, in Toronto. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sep 9, 2026--

Turing, the superintelligence accelerator that drives real economic progress from AI, today announced that Patrick McKinney has joined the company as Chief Information Security Officer (CISO). McKinney will lead Turing’s global security strategy as the company scales its work with the world’s leading AI labs and enterprises across highly regulated industries.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260909246850/en/

McKinney brings extensive experience building and scaling security programs at high-growth technology companies. Most recently, he served as vice president of security & IT at Invisible Technologies, where he was the company’s first dedicated security hire and built its security organization from the ground up to support some of the world’s largest companies. Earlier in his career, McKinney held security and compliance roles at Dropbox and Coinbase, where he was part of the teams that helped guide both companies through their public offerings.

“Patrick has built security organizations for some of the most demanding and fast-moving technology environments, and he understands that world-class security has to enable a business to move quickly, not stand in its way,” said Jonathan Siddharth, CEO and founder of Turing. “As Turing works with frontier labs and enterprises to build and deploy increasingly capable AI systems, Patrick will help ensure security remains foundational to how we operate and scale.”

“AI is fundamentally changing the security landscape. It gives security teams powerful new capabilities to monitor and respond to threats at scale, while giving adversaries access to capabilities they’ve never had before,” said McKinney. “Turing operates at the forefront of that shift, working with leading AI labs and enterprises across industries and around the world. As AI continues to advance, security has an important role to play in enabling its potential across industries.”

As CISO, McKinney will oversee security across Turing’s frontier AI and enterprise AI businesses. Turing works with leading AI labs and Fortune 500 companies across industries including financial services, life sciences, healthcare, retail and automotive, creating a broad range of security, compliance and data protection requirements.

About Turing

Turing’s mission is to accelerate superintelligence to drive real economic progress. Headquartered in San Francisco, Turing helps frontier AI labs improve model capabilities in software engineering, enterprise knowledge work, and frontier STEM by providing evaluations, expert human data, and reinforcement learning environments. In software engineering, Turing is the category’s largest and longest-running research and data provider. Turing also helps Fortune 500 enterprises across financial services, life sciences, healthcare, retail, automotive, and CPG to build, deploy, and scale agentic AI systems. By operating on both sides, Turing closes the loop between frontier research and enterprise deployment. Learn more at www.turing.com.

Patrick McKinney, Chief Information Security Officer, Turing