Bayern Munich benches key players for rejecting COVID vaccine

Football giants Bayern Munich is forcing five of its key players to miss matches and training for refusing the COVID vaccines as demanded by Germany’s tough new COVID restrictions.

The players, including Serge Gnabry, Joshua Kimmich and three others also have their wages deducted.

The other vax resistors are Jamal Musiala, Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting and Michael Cuisance.

The five unvaccinated players are being forced to miss matches and training under Germany’s tough new Covid restrictions

Bayern have told the players they will not be paid for every game or day of training they miss when self-isolating after they all refused to get the vaccine.

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According to German news outlet Bild, Bayern told the players last week that they would be withholding pay if anyone missed work due to being unvaccinated.

The report comes days after Bayern suffered a shock 2-1 defeat at the hands of local rivals Augsburg on Friday, which saw Kimmich, the midfield star for both Bayern and Germany, miss the encounter after he was forced to quarantine.

Gnabry started that match, while Musiala and Choupo-Moting came on as substitutes, while Cuisance was an unused substitute.

Those four players were all then placed into quarantine following a new exposure to Covid, hours after the reports about pay cuts emerged in Germany.

Their Bayern team-mates Niklas Sule and Josip Stanisic had tested positive for Covid last week, with the club confirming that those two players were vaccinated.