BERN, Switzerland — Switzerland captain Granit Xhaka acknowledged errors Monday and withdrew from the national team squad after admitting he used fake documents during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The 33-year-old Xhaka was suspected of getting a fake vaccination certificate in 2022 from a doctor under investigation by prosecutors in Lucerne, Swiss media reported at the weekend.
“It was a mistake. I am sorry,” Xhaka said Monday in a post on his Instagram account, explaining he had at the time felt a “deep distrust” of COVID-19 vaccines. He added he will cooperate with authorities.
Switzerland’s most capped player, with 152 games for the national team, will not join the squad ahead of four games in the Nations League.
Swiss soccer federation president Peter Knäbel said in a statement it welcomed Xhaka taking responsibility to fully clarify the matter.
“At the same time, we have agreed together that it’s in the team’s best interest to play these matches without him,” Knäbel said.
World Cup quarterfinalist Switzerland travels to face North Macedonia and Scotland before hosting Slovenia and North Macedonia, both in Lucerne, in their Nations League second-tier group.
Later Monday, at the Swiss team’s training camp in Turkey, Knäbel told reporters there had been no discussion of Xhaka giving up the captaincy.
Knäbel declined to make a comparison with former Switzerland men’s ice hockey coach Patrick Fischer who was fired this year after reports he got a fake vaccination certificate to travel to China for the 2022 Beijing Olympics. Chinese authorities had mandated being vaccinated or spending three weeks in quarantine there.
That was a vaccination requirement to attend the Olympics, Knäbel said, while Swiss soccer authorities had only recommended players getting the vaccine during the pandemic.
