Werder Bremen midfielders Clemens Fritz and Zlatko Junuzovic have been fined €20,000 by the German FA (DFB) after admitting they deliberately got booked in the 4-1 win against Hannover last weekend.
The pair, suspended for the match at Bundesliga leaders Bayern Munich on Saturday following the yellow cards, were investigated and fined after the comments, made on German TV after the Hannover game.
During the hearing, both players admitted that, without the knowledge of the club, they picked up the cards in order to miss the Bayern match instead of another, more important fixture.
"I don't want to hide that, just like all other courts, we have sympathy for the honest," judge Hans E. Lorenz, of the DFB sports court, said.
"But it can't be that Bundesliga clubs generally pick up suspension before Bayern matches.
"This then leads to Bayern regularly facing weaker opponents than the rest of the league. We are here to guarantee a fair competition."
Lorenz referred to incident in February when five Darmstadt players picked up suspensions prior to their club's match at the Allianz Arena.
Speaking at his prematch news conference on Friday, Bayern coach Pep Guardiola said: "It also happened with Darmstadt. But we've also seen how complicated it was [in the match] against Darmstadt."
That day, Bayern overcame a 1-0 half-time deficit as they scored three goals in the second half to win.
