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Markus Anfang from Werder Bremen
Photo: Daniel Karmann / dpa
It is already 10:27 p.m. when Werder Bremen published a press release on Thursday evening.
A club official does not have a say in it, only Markus Anfang, the coach of the second division soccer team.
There are two paragraphs that provide more questions than answers.
You have the potential to shake the club.
The beginning is said to have used a fake digital vaccination certificate.
SPIEGEL learned that the possible fake should have been noticed during a visit to the Bremen health department.
In the beginning, the authorities should have visited after a Werder Bremen player, Marco Friedl, recently tested positive for the corona virus.
The Bremen public prosecutor's office confirmed to SPIEGEL that their authority was investigating towards the beginning that the health department had filed the criminal complaint towards the beginning.
Forgery of documents can be punished with a fine or even imprisonment.
Denied beginning
The beginning had taken over the relegated Bundesliga at the beginning of the season and had come from Darmstadt for a transfer fee of allegedly 400,000 euros.
The 47-year-old had previously worked as a coach for 1. FC Köln and Holstein Kiel.
According to the Bremen announcement on Thursday evening, Anfang firmly denied the allegations and emphatically asserts that it has been fully vaccinated.
At the beginning he had himself vaccinated in an official vaccination center, for which he »got the appropriate sticker in the yellow vaccination certificate.
I then had it digitized at the pharmacy «.
Of course, he assumed that »everything is in order« and very much hopes that the subject will be cleared up quickly.
The association is said to have learned of the criminal complaint towards the beginning on Thursday and then tried to work up the case.
The notification in the late evening should give the beginning the opportunity to comment on the case.
The case had previously become known to an editorial team.
Werder itself does not express itself in the statement with an official voice, there is no backing for initial statements.
Normally, it seems, the incident should be resolved quickly.
A call to the vaccination center - case resolved.
Show the yellow vaccination book with the stickers - case settled.
It should also lead to errors with the digital vaccination certificates, if personal data of the vaccinated person is inadvertently entered incorrectly.
According to experts, however, these errors can be checked within a few minutes.
When asked, Werder did not want to tell how the club proceeded to reconstruct the case.
The public prosecutor's office did not provide any information either.
Almost at the same time as the beginning of the cause became known, there was an update for the Corona warning app.
The app can now mark fake vaccination certificates as invalid.
Specifically, it recognizes manipulated certificates from pharmacies that have become known to have issued counterfeits.
The case of a pharmacy employee from Munich who is said to have sold QR codes for digital vaccination cards recently attracted more attention.
How the possible forgery should have been noticed at the beginning remained unclear at first.
According to "Deichstube", the vaccine batch number and vaccination date should have been inconsistent in the trainer's vaccination certificate.
It is said that the health department examined the case “in depth”.
Then the public prosecutor was informed.
