Xhaka receives a two-year probation over a forged Covid certificate

Granit Xhaka said on Thursday that a Swiss court had put him on two years' probation after he admitted obtaining a fake Covid-19 vaccination certificate during the pandemic. The Switzerland and Sunderland captain is 34. The Independent reported that the order includes a suspended fine of 150,000 Swiss francs, about 136,000 pounds, plus court fees, which he has already paid. He wrote that he accepted the decision. He had apologised earlier, and he had said the certificate came from a deep mistrust of the vaccine and that the decision was a mistake.

The case is not only about a footballer. Xhaka sat out four recent Nations League matches so that public prosecutors in Lucerne could continue an investigation into a local doctor. His absence was the visible part of that inquiry. The probation closes his own admission. It does not close the inquiry into how the certificate was produced. A forged vaccination document in Switzerland during the certificate regime was a criminal document, not a private note. The court treated the admission as the basis for probation rather than for immediate custody.

What the sentence allows him to do

Probation of two years, with a fine suspended, means the 150,000 francs is not taken unless he breaches the order. He is free to play. Sunderland expect him back for the match against Brighton on Saturday. The club has not announced a sporting sanction of its own. The Swiss Football Association has said it will look again at his place in the national team before the November fixtures. That review is separate from the court. A captain who missed four Nations League games for a prosecutors' inquiry returns to club duty first, and to the national side only if the federation says so.

The timing sits on an awkward calendar. He is Switzerland captain, and he is Sunderland captain. A September Nations League camp went ahead without him. The next international window is November. Between the two, the court has published, through his own account, a sentence the federation can read. A review that ignored the probation would be hard to explain. A review that dropped the captain on a spent admission would also need a reason beyond the court's own choice of probation over a harsher order.

The certificate, and the doctor

Xhaka has not, in the statements reported on Thursday, named the doctor or described the price of the document. The Lucerne inquiry is the place those facts belong, and it is still open. What he has said is the motive he wants on the record: mistrust of the vaccine, and a mistake he accepts. Mistrust explains a refusal. It does not, by itself, explain a forged certificate. The court heard the admission and answered with probation and a suspended fine, which is a judgment on seriousness as well as on guilt. The fine's size, 150,000 francs, is the money measure of that judgment. The two years are the time measure.

For Sunderland the sporting question is narrower. He is available on Saturday if selected. A midfielder who has been out of the national side for four matches is not short of match fitness in the same way as a player returning from injury, but he is short of the rhythm of those games. Regis Le Bris, the head coach, has not had to comment on a criminal order before this week. The club's interest is the Saturday team sheet. The federation's interest is November. The prosecutors' interest is the doctor.

What remains open

The probation is his. The inquiry is not finished. If Lucerne charges the doctor, the certificate's origin becomes a second case, and Xhaka's admission may be evidence in it rather than the end of the story. If the inquiry closes without a charge, Thursday's order is the whole public result. Either way, the number that will be cited is the one he accepted: two years, 150,000 francs suspended, fees paid, an apology already made, and a return to club duty against Brighton while the Swiss federation decides whether the captain's armband survives until November.