FRANKFURT: The German football federation has fined Jude Bellingham €40,000 for his weekend comments querying a refereeing appointment.

The Borussia Dortmund 18-year-old questioned the choice of Felix Zwayer to referee Dortmund’s 3-2 defeat by Bayern Munich, referring to the official’s six-month ban for a match-fixing scandal in 2005.

Zwayer rejected Dortmund’s appeals for a penalty before giving their rivals a spot-kick for a Mats Hummels handball. Robert Lewandowski scored the penalty to secure a victory which lifted leaders Bayern four points clear of Dortmund.

Later England midfielder Bellingham said: “You give a referee, that has match fixed before, the biggest game in Germany. What do you expect?

“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.”

A DFB statement read: “The sports court of the German Football Association (DFB) fined Jude Bellingham with a fine of 40,000 euros in single judge proceedings after the DFB control committee had brought charges for unsportsmanlike behavior.

“The player of the Bundesliga club Borussia Dortmund has already agreed to the judgment, the judgment is now final.

“After the Bundesliga match against Bayern Munich on Saturday, Bellingham said in a TV interview about referee Felix Zwayer: ‘You give a referee who has already match-fixing the biggest game in Germany. What do you expect?’.

“As a result, he had questioned the referee’s impartiality and ultimately denied it.”

Zwayer was one of four Berlin referees whose evidence revealed a betting and matchfixing scandal in 2005 which centred on referee Robert Hoyzer.

However Zwayer was later banned for six months because he initially did not report Hoyzer and had also accepted €300 from Hoyzer while acting as an assistant in a lower division game between Wuppertaler and Werder Bremen II.

Since then Zwayer was appointed to the FIFA international list in 2015 and was a VAR official at the 2018 World Cup and at the 2019 Women’s World Cup. He refereed the German cup final final in 2018 and the Greek cup final in 2019.

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