The young Reds, managed by former midfielder Marc Bridge-Wilkinson, were participating in a tournament involving and . On Friday, a Liverpool player said he was called the N-word - a claim that was denied by Hoffenheim who instead suggested the German slang term 'digga' was used, meaning 'bro'. Despite tournament organisers promising the term would be tolerated moving forward, the same player alleged the word was used again when playing against Frankfurt on Saturday - prompting Liverpool to leave the field for the second day in a row.
" can confirm that a member of our under-18s team reported he was racially abused by an opponent while playing in the Bundesliga Cup youth tournament at Schwabisch Hall in Germany on Friday," a club statement read. "The player immediately alerted the match official, his team-mates, and our coaching staff. Consequently, LFC’s management team decided to stop the game and leave the pitch together.
"In a further incident, the same player was the target of abuse during a fixture in the tournament today. Again, the player alerted his team-mates and coaching staff and our management team opted to leave the pitch once more. "We are proud of our player for his prompt actions in reporting the incident and the maturity of his response.
He and any of his team-mates affected are being supported by the academy safeguarding team. The club calls upon our opponents and the tournament organisers to conduct an urgent and thorough investigation into the incident.” Frankfurt responded in a similar fashion to Hoffenheim, telling German publication "we can rule out racism" and that it was the incident was nothing more than a "language issue".
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