Tuesday, November 23, 2021
Gnabry and Musiala with pricks?
The vaccination saga about Kimmich goes into the last season
Is the vaccination debate about Joshua Kimmich and Co? According to media reports, the unvaccinated national player and his teammates at Bayern Munich should seriously think about a vaccination. Two are said to have already been vaccinated. Politics has meanwhile increased the pressure on the players.
The vaccination debate about the five Bayern professionals Joshua Kimmich, Serge Gnabry, Jamal Musiala, Eric-Maxim Choupo-Moting and Michael Cuiscance has been preoccupying Germany for weeks. It’s about vaccination skepticism, quarantine orders, withheld salaries and the split in the squad of the most successful German soccer team. It reflects the overall social situation in autumn 2021 and is noisy, escalating up to the government and down to the regulars of the republic.
Now the last act of the vaccination debate about Joshua Kimmich, the most famous unvaccinated person in the country, could follow. As “The Athletic” and “Bild” report, at least three of the five players should now seriously consider vaccination. It should be Michael Cuisance and the two national players Kimmich and Gnabry. Like Musiala and Choupo-Moting, they are currently in quarantine as contact persons. Early on Tuesday evening, the “kicker” reported that two players, Gnabry and Musiala, had already been vaccinated. For everyone except Cuisance, it is already the second corona-related quarantine within a few weeks.
Club doesn’t want to comment
Talks with immunologists, doctors and teammates are cited as the reason for the change in mood among the players. On Monday, Leroy Sané, the face of the Bavarian vaccination campaign, said that the team would “briefly talk about it”. He said: “These are important players for us, we want them to be there. There is no question about that.” If the Bayern players decide or have already decided to have a vaccination, they are considered fully vaccinated at Biontech at the earliest after five weeks and Moderna after six weeks. An exception applies to Gnabry: due to an earlier infection, it only needs one vaccination and is considered fully vaccinated after two weeks.
Sports director Hasan Salihamidžić was annoyed before the game in the Champions League at Dynamo Kiev, for which coach Julian Nagelsmann could only nominate four field players for the bench. He referred to the general attitude of the club. Even when asked, he did not want to comment on the press reports.
Association increases pressure, politics too
Most recently, the pressure on the unvaccinated Bayern Munich players was increased. As the “Bild am Sonntag” reported, all Bayern players who have to be quarantined because of a missing corona vaccination will no longer be paid by the club during this time. The professionals lose several hundred thousand euros, depending on their salary.
The former chairman of the board, Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, had declared that it was “a debate that is slowly becoming annoying for the association. Everyone has tried to clear up the issue of non-vaccination or to find a solution. That has not yet succeeded,” argued Rummenigge. Sky “. He knew “from a reliable source” from many conversations with the previously unvaccinated professionals at FC Bayern. “Corona occupies the whole club and the team,” said Rummenigge.
There was also increasing signal from politics that future tightening of the corona protection regulations of the federal states will not provide for any exceptions for professional football. A new ordinance will come into force in North Rhine-Westphalia on Wednesday. In this, the 2G rule will also apply to professional athletes when practicing their profession. This applies to all professional soccer games in NRW.
However, for “participants in professional leagues, leagues and competitions of an association that is a member of the German Olympic Sports Confederation”, according to the text of the regulation, “a test certificate according to § 2 paragraph 8 sentence 2 is temporarily available as a substitute for immunization sufficient on the basis of a PCR test “. However, the length of this transition period is not defined. The State Ministry of Health of North Rhine-Westphalia has not yet responded to a request from ntv.de.