Berlin — A German football coach was on Wednesday banned from football for a year and fined €20,000 ($22,564) after admitting he used fake documents to claim he was fully vaccinated against Covid.
Markus Anfang was sacked by second-division club Werder Bremen last November after it emerged he and his assistant coach, who was also fired, had both used forged certificates.
The pair had also attempted to deceive the local health authority in order to avoid quarantine as contact cases.
Anfang's former assistant Florian Junge has also been banned for 10 months and fined 3,000 euros by the German Football Association (DFB).
"Markus Anfang and Florian Junge have contravened their role-model positions as coaches to a considerable extent through their actions," said Hans E. Lorenz, chairman of the DFB sports court.
As the pair both confessed, their bans are partly on probation to enable them to coach next season.
According to the DFB statement, Anfang and Junge "each obtained a forged vaccination certificate in the summer of 2021, which incorrectly identified them as 'twice vaccinated against the coronavirus'".
They handed over fake certificates to Werder, "so that from early autumn onwards they no longer took part" in the club's regular testing programme.
In addition, they both presented a forged vaccination card to Bremen's health authority in order to dodge quarantine as contact cases after Bremen defender Marco Friedl tested positive.
AFP