It is now clear: Naby Keita will not play any more games for SV Werder Bremen this season. The club has suspended the 29-year-old until the end of the season following his game boycott for the game in Leverkusen last weekend. He was given a “significant fine,” according to a statement from the club. Keita is not allowed to train with the team or be in the professional dressing room.
“Naby’s behavior cannot be tolerated for us as a club. With this action, he let his team down in a tense sporting and personnel situation and placed himself above the team. We can’t allow that. At this stage of the season we need full focus on the remaining games and a team that is very close together. “There was therefore no alternative to our measures,” explained Clemens Fritz, head of professional football at Werder Bremen.
After Naby Keita found out on Saturday that he would not be in the starting eleven for Sunday’s game at Bayer Leverkusen, he went home and did not get on the bus with his colleagues towards the Rhineland. On Monday, those responsible at SV Werder Bremen sat down with Keita and his advisors. A decision was postponed until Tuesday and has now been announced. Werder did not say what would happen next after the suspension. Keita’s contract with the Green-Whites runs until 2026.
The signing of Keita caused great euphoria last summer. Werder Bremen was celebrated for the transfer coup. After all, Naby Keita belonged to the category of top players who are actually unattainable for Bremen – and then he was also available for free. Liverpool FC decided not to extend his contract because Keita had been absent too often in the past. In 2018, the club paid German coach Jürgen Klopp a transfer fee of 60 million euros for the RB Leipzig midfielder. And at least at times, Keita also showed his class in the Premier League, winning the championship and even the Champions League with Liverpool FC. However, his downtime became longer and longer, with muscular problems in particular bothering him. That’s why a lot of clubs turned them down when Keita was offered to them in the summer. Werder, on the other hand, took action – and quickly experienced their first disappointment. While warming up for the first test match in mid-July, Keita was injured and was out for two months. After two short appearances in September, the starting eleven debuted at the beginning of October, which ended prematurely with the next muscle injury.
At the end of November, Naby Keita was available again, but was not taken into account by Ole Werner. This was followed by participation in the Africa Cup of Nations as captain of the Guinea national team. There he was on the pitch four times, even for the entire season when he was eliminated in the quarter-finals. That gave SV Werder Bremen hope. But a stomach flu stopped the former top star. In his two short appearances in the Bundesliga and especially in the friendly against Hannover 96, Keita didn’t seem fit at all and played without any pace. Now his boycott and suspension followed.
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