Felix Zwayer was born in Berlin and referees in the Bundesliga but not everybody in Germany agrees he should be officiating at the men’s European Championship.
Zwayer, who began refereeing in Germany’s top flight in the 2009-10 season, was involved in a match-fixing scandal in 2005.
The 43-year-old admitted to taking money from banned referee Robert Hoyzer, who was accused of match-fixing but not of altering the outcome of a game. When this came to light, Zwayer was hit with a six-month ban.
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Zwayer took charge of Italy’s 2-1 win over Albania on Saturday and will oversee Turkey’s game against Portugal on Saturday, but the German’s presence at the Euros drew criticism from former Bundesliga and FIFA official Manuel Grafe.
“This match will go down as a great shame in the glorious history of german referees over the last decades,” Grafe posted on social media after the Italy-Albania game.
“A referee who was involved in match fixing+who remained silent about it for 6 months until final moment, thereby enabling further manipulation, sentenced by own association, was nominated by DFB/UEFA (zero tolerance match fixing?!) for the Euro and appointed for this game.
“Other referees would have deserved it more…”
Zwayer was selected as a Video Assistant Referee at the 2018 World Cup and took charge of the UEFA Nations League final between Spain and Italy last year. He is regularly used by UEFA across its club and national team competitions.
In December 2021, Zwayer took a two-month break from officiating after Jude Bellingham’s comments following Borussia Dortmund’s 3-2 defeat by Bayern Munich in the Bundesliga.
Zwayer had rejected Dortmund’s appeals for a penalty in the game before later giving Bayern a spot-kick for a Mats Hummels’ handball. Robert Lewandowski converted the penalty and secured victory for Bayern, who at the time led second-place Dortmund by four points in the table.
“You give a referee, that has match fixed before, the biggest game in Germany. What do you expect?” Bellingham, who was fined €40,000 by German football officials but avoided a ban for his comments, said to Viaplay after the game.
“For me, it wasn’t (a penalty). He (Hummels) is not even looking at the ball and he’s fighting to get it and it hits him. You can look at a lot of the decisions in the game.”
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Dortmund came out in full support of Bellingham, who recently won the Champions League final against his old club with Real Madrid.
Michael Zorc, Dortmund’s then sporting director, said the club were “100 per cent” behind the then 18-year-old Bellingham.
“It was a very emotional situation, he was very disappointed and only named known facts,” Zorc said. Chief executive Hans-Joachim Watzke added: “To be clear, Jude was not spreading lies, but what happened in the past. This statement shouldn’t have been, but I don’t see anything untrue there. I don’t expect that to have any consequences for Jude.”
Zwayer, though, defended himself following the match, later telling German outlet BILD: “The statement deliberately creates the false impression that I did not referee the match to the best of my ability. It is personal, disparaging and disrespectful. Even if you put yourself in the subjective perspective, which is marked by emotion, his statement is far from professional or factual.”
(Cathrin Mueller/Getty Images)