Xhaka has 152 Switzerland caps, and he is missing the next four over a Covid certificate

Granit Xhaka has played 152 times for Switzerland, more than anyone in the country’s history. He will not play the next four. The Swiss Football Association confirmed on Monday that its captain would sit out this international window, after a weekend of Swiss media reports that prosecutors in Lucerne were looking into a Covid vaccination certificate he obtained during the pandemic without having had the jab.

Xhaka, who is 33 and plays for Sunderland, did not wait for the investigation to finish before saying something. He posted an admission on Instagram.

What he actually said

The admission covers a certificate obtained in 2022, when he was still an Arsenal player. Xhaka described a stretch of the pandemic in which he had serious doubts about the vaccine and nowhere he trusted to take them.

“In this turbulent emotional state, I obtained a vaccination certificate instead of clarifying my open questions through the proper channels,” he wrote. “Today I clearly see that this was the wrong approach. It was a mistake. I am sorry.”

Swiss reporting has centred on certificates listing vaccination dates in January and November 2022. He has said he will cooperate with the authorities.

The Lucerne case is bigger than one footballer

The public prosecutor’s office in Lucerne has opened an inquiry into him. A spokesperson framed it as an attempt to establish whether there has been conduct relevant under criminal law in connection with the possible fraudulent obtaining of a false certification and document forgery.

He is not the origin of it. Swiss investigators have spent years on a doctor in Lucerne suspected of issuing certificates to people who were never vaccinated. Police raided her clinic in 2023 and took evidence away, and the inquiry has since reached a number of people believed to have received documents through her. The doctor denies the accusations.

Swiss law treats forgery seriously enough that a conviction can carry a custodial sentence of up to five years, though comparable cases have tended to end in fines.

The federation moved quickly, and carefully

Peter Knabel, the president of the Swiss FA, put out a statement that did two things at once. It praised the player for owning up, and it took him out of the camp.

“We welcome Granit taking this step and facing the consequences,” Knabel said. “At the same time, we jointly concluded that it is in the team’s best interest to complete this training camp without him.”

The federation says it will look at the situation again once the international break is over. Nobody has called this the end of his international career, and the wording leaves the door open.

One piece of context is worth keeping in view. The Swiss FA never required players to prove they were vaccinated in order to play for the national team. It issued recommendations. Whatever that certificate was for, it was not for getting Xhaka into a Switzerland shirt.

What Switzerland lose

Four Nations League B fixtures in Group 1, starting away to North Macedonia in Skopje on Saturday and away to Scotland at Hampden Park on 29 September, with Slovenia and North Macedonia at home on 3 and 6 October. It is an unusually long window, which is why the club calendar across Europe has such a large hole in it this month.

Switzerland play those four without the man who has been the spine of the side for a decade and a half. He was in midfield when they took Argentina to extra time in a World Cup quarter-final on 11 July, losing 3-1 after Dan Ndoye had levelled it with 23 minutes to go. He passed Heinz Hermann’s long-standing record to become the most-capped Swiss player of all time. There is no obvious replacement for that.

Sunderland, on the other hand, get a midfielder with no international travel for three weeks, which is not the worst outcome for a club just beaten 5-3 at Manchester City. Xhaka has played six times for them this season and they need him working.

The part that will follow him

Xhaka has spent his career as the player everyone has an opinion about. The armband arguments at Arsenal, the temper, the two seasons at Leverkusen where he won a Bundesliga and DFB-Pokal double under Xabi Alonso, the £17m move to a newly promoted Sunderland at 32 to be the adult in the room. He has been written off more than once and has kept turning up.

This one is different in kind. It is not a red card or a bad night. It is a document, and a document does not get argued away on a phone-in. Whether the Lucerne file ends in a fine or in nothing at all, the admission is now on the record in his own words, and he put it there himself rather than wait for it to be dragged out of him.

He turns 34 on Sunday, the day after the game in Skopje he will not be playing in. The Swiss FA looks at all this again in October.

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