Eberl: That’s why FC Bayern pulled the plug on Woltemade – selection of talent

Review of the transfer summer

Sports director Max Eberl received austerity requirements for squad planning at FC Bayern in the summer, but could have made an exception for the transfer of Bayer Leverkusen’s Florian Wirtz – unlike in the Nick Woltemade case. While the 22-year-old Wirtz decided, to the Munich team’s regret, for Liverpool FC and went to the Premier League for at least 125 million euros, the German record champions dropped out of the poker for the 23-year-old Woltemade in view of the high demands of VfB Stuttgart. Newcastle United took the deal for at least 75 million euros.

Eberl said about Wirtz in the “11Freunde” interview: “Of course we evaluated how far we could go. We knew that we could handle his salary, but it wasn’t completely clear to us what Bayer Leverkusen would demand if FC Bayern asked and, as expected, another top club entered the race. That’s why we agreed that a special edition would be made available for the Wirtz transfer, because it justifies this enormous price.”

With Woltemade, however, Bayern were not prepared to take any sum. “Every investment has to pay off in the long term. We had set an upper limit for the transfer fee for Nick Woltemade and had reached this in our offer to VfB Stuttgart. This fact is also part of transfers and can be a dealbreaker,” explained Eberl. FCB is said to have offered a fixed 50 million plus 5 million euros in bonuses in its last attempt, but this was rejected by Stuttgart. The Bayern supervisory board spoke out against a new offer, as Karl-Heinz Rummenigge told “Bayerischer Rundfunk” at the end of September and said: “I can only congratulate them in Stuttgart for finding an idiot – I’ll say it in quotation marks – who paid so much money because we definitely wouldn’t have done that in Munich.”

Sports director Eberl now said: “Nick is still a great player and a super guy, but a different type of player than Florian Wirtz. Ultimately, we wanted to stick to our budget strategy.” This also included letting several talents go, including Mathys Tel (to Tottenham), Adam Aznou (Everton) and Paul Wanner (PSV Eindhoven). In total, these youngsters generated 59 million euros in income, which made the summer transfer increase of around 10 million euros possible.

FC Bayern cannot keep all the talent, but has to choose

“It is Vincent’s (coach Kompany’s) wish to promote talent, but we have to make a selection,” explained Eberl. “It’s not possible for us to have top players in all parts of the team – plus four or five young players. Because it is then very likely that the experienced professionals will usually be used in tight and important games. We therefore deliberately focused on Lennart Karl, Wisdom Mike, both 17, and 16-year-old Cassiano Kiala as young players among the professionals because, in our opinion, they have the greatest development potential.” The French attacker Tel had been with Bayern for a long time, but never quite made the breakthrough.

Not only external reinforcements, but also contract extensions with Jamal Musiala (22), Alphonso Davies (24) and Joshua Kimmich (30) were high on Eberl’s to-do list. “Keeping them was a fundamental decision by the club and one that we were prepared to spend money on.” The situation looked a little different for Leroy Sané, who moved to Galatasaray on a free transfer. “With Leroy, we were open. Here we were in discussions to know what ideas he had in terms of sport, money or life, in order to be prepared. Because: The problem is not that a player leaves, but not having a replacement,” said Eberl. At the end of May, the international made it clear to the Munich team that he did not want to stay. And FCB picked up Liverpool’s Luis Díaz. The 28-year-old Colombian came for 70 million euros and has so far proven to be an absolute reinforcement with ten goals in eleven appearances.