At SV Werder Bremen, it is normal that those responsible always demonstrate unity and internal harmony, even in turbulent times. This attitude is considered to be the core of the club’s brand, but the so-called “Werder family” has recently been put to the test. The traditional club has had some tough months behind it: A sporty slide down to the second class, worrying balance sheets with deep red numbers, players who went on strike, an occasional noticeable dissatisfaction in the stands in the Bremen Weser Stadium.
And now that.
On Saturday morning, SV Werder announced that coach Markus Anfang had resigned, along with his assistant Florian Junge. The reason for the decision “are public prosecution investigations against both coaches and the resulting unrest in and around the club,” says the club’s announcement. The contracts from the beginning and the young are terminated at their own request, which is of central importance in this case: It releases the club from the obligation to continue to pay for the salaries of the coaching duo.
The complaint was made by the Bremen health department
They are now familiar with crises in Bremen, but this case is of particular importance: It became known on Thursday evening that a criminal complaint was filed against Trainer Anfang because of the use of a certificate to prove a corona vaccination. And not from an anonymous whistleblower who might want to wipe out something on the 47-year-old or the club: the Bremen health department was behind the complaint.
The first discrepancies surfaced at the end of last week when the authority came across a corona case in the SV Werder squad. Defense attorney Marco Friedl had tested positive, which is why the health department went about its routine work: tracking infection chains and checking the vaccination status of possible contact persons, because non-vaccinated people have to go into quarantine in such a case. In this context, according to several media reports, great doubts have arisen as to the authenticity of the vaccination certificate presented from the beginning. The batch number of the vaccine could obviously not be assigned, one of the two vaccination appointments overlapped with an official obligation of the trainer. Did the beginning get a forged document? The health department was suspicious and filed a criminal complaint.
On Friday, Werder sports director Frank Baumann stood behind his coach
At the beginning, the allegations were vehemently denied on Thursday, and so far neither the coach nor the club have heard any statements that indicate a clear admission of guilt. On the contrary: at the beginning, it said in the communiqué on Saturday, “because of the now extremely stressful situation for the club, the team, my family and myself” decided to give up the job as head coach. Not a word about a possible mistake, which is certainly also related to the ongoing investigation.
Frank Baumann, the sports director of SV Werder, also defended the beginning on Friday afternoon in a television interview. Baumann had said that there was “no reason” to doubt the credibility from the start. Then he added that everyone involved was ready to “cooperate fully” with the authorities. If you wanted to, you could already see a criminal case looming with this vocabulary. In one on Saturday on the website interview video published by the club Baumann explained that “further developments” and a “different situation” would have led to the break with the “most important employee” of SV Werder.
If the allegations are substantiated, then there is a risk of great hardship at the beginning: his career as a coach is likely to be over, at least for the time being, as he would have lied to both his own club and the public. He would also have been guilty of forging documents, which is punishable by a fine or, in the worst case, even a prison sentence.
When he took up his position as Werder coach, so much is known, the beginning was definitely not vaccinated. The coach, for whom the presumption of innocence still applies, had made no secret of this. In the summer, many people were still waiting for their vaccinations. However, and now it’s getting spicy, I started out loud Weser courier submitted a vaccination certificate to the club in autumn, which is why he no longer had to take part in the mandatory test series. So was the coach unvaccinated and untested in contact with the players, almost every day on the training ground and in the dressing room, while the number of infections skyrocketed across the country? That is of course also in the room now.
The coach at the beginning should guide Werder into a better future
In purely sporting terms, the damage is already immense for SV Werder. The beginning was the absolute preferred candidate of the club management, he was plotted against a transfer payment of allegedly 400,000 euros from Darmstadt to the Weser. A lot of money for the clammy Bremer who had agreed on a common narrative with the coach: “Reconstruction instead of resurgence”. Everyone involved kept repeating this sentence, the current season was seen as the transition to a better future – a future with a coach at the beginning, who got a pen in Bremen with which he could draw a long line after the last restless and disappointing months should.
This Saturday evening Werder welcomes FC Schalke 04 to their top game in the second division. From the sidelines, the assistant coach Danjiel Zenkovic and the remaining coaching team will look after the team. And it’s probably not a very bold forecast: the result of the game will not be the determining topic in Bremen’s Weserstadion.