Bayern Munich have successfully appealed against Jerome Boateng's three-match ban and the German Football Association (DFB) has reduced the Germany international's sentence to two games.
Boateng, 26, was sent off for a professional foul against Sidney Sam only 17 minutes into Bayern's 1-1 draw with Schalke last Tuesday, though Royal Blues attacker Eric Maxim Choupo-Mouting then failed to convert the penalty.
Late last week, the Federal Court of the DFB presented Boateng, who has now received four straight red cards in Bundesliga, with a three-match ban, but on the day of the verdict Bayern Munich announced that they would appeal the verdict.
The original sentence included a one-match ban for the professional foul, and one each for being a repeated offender and for Choupo-Mouting's miss, an oddness in the DFB law.
"It was effectively a threefold punishment," Bayern Munich sporting director Matthias Sammer said. "Moreover, the red card was early on in the match, and thus it means he'd be banned for nearly four games."
On Monday, the Federal Court of the DFB followed the argument and reduced the ban to two games.
"There is a new case law. When a player only gets a one-match ban for the foul, he can't be punished as a repeat offender," DFB chief prosecutor Anton Nachreiner said during the hearing in quotes reported by Bild. "That's why he only gets the ban for the foul and the saved penalty."
"If the penalty had been converted, Jerome Boateng would have been punished with a one-match ban only -- despite his previous offences. The fact that Manuel Neuer saved the penalty should not lead to a 200 percent increase of the ban to three games," the chairman of the Federal Court of the DFB, Hans E. Lorenz, said in quotes reported by the official DFB website.
Boateng has already missed Bayern's 2-0 victory at Stuttgart, and will now miss the upcoming clash against his former club Hamburg. The centre-back can return to the Bayern squad in time for their away trip to struggling Paderborn on Feb. 21.