FC Bayern coach Thomas Tuchel was hoping for his “Holding Six” until the end of the last transfer day. Joao Palhinha from FC Fulham should be the new Munich “six”. However, according to media reports, the change fell through on the home stretch.
This day, on which a transfer period ends at 6 p.m., is also a busy one for the Bundesliga club FC Bayern Munich. Trainers, doctors, but also the press department are on the alert because something could still happen this Friday, September 1st. Especially when Benjamin Pavard had recently said goodbye and flushed around 30 million euros into the till.
For coach Thomas Tuchel, however, the first thing to do was the press conference before the away game at Borussia Mönchengladbach. Business as usual? no way. The first question about the transfer rumors about the defensive midfielder Joao Palhinha from FC Fulham came right at the beginning: “It will take a few hours and we are trying to complete and strengthen our team. It seems to be a last-minute decision,” said the coach.
Palhinha already in Munich – then the Fulham retreat
A hint, a hope, yes, but: He’s not his player yet, so he doesn’t go into detail. Tuchel handled it the same way with Harry Kane. And Palhinha was also in Munich on Friday, completed the medical check and was caught with an FCB jersey. But the evening then had an update ready: According to consistent media reports, the transfer burst in the last few meters because Fulham could not find a successor.
Like Guardiola’s “Thiago or nothing”
Tuchel would have liked to have had this purely defensive midfielder. His summery hints of it in the past few weeks were a little reminiscent of Pep Guardiola’s famous “Thiago oder nix” in the summer of 2013. Guardiola got his Spanish midfield strategist back then. Tuchel got nothing.
A slap for him transfer committee
The past few months have been particularly exhausting for the coach anyway – after all, the new sports director Christoph Freund only took up his position this Friday. In the Munich transfer committee, which also included Uli Hoeneß and Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, Tuchel was the sporting spokesman.
As such, he got his first dream deal. In Harry Kane, FC Bayern has signed an excellent centre-forward for the sum of 100 million euros, which was unprecedented in the Bayern era. And now, in his ideal world, the “Holding Six” should follow, for 65 million euros. But that doesn’t come first, just like new defenders.
Tuchel admits Pavard flaws
Incidentally, the coach would not have been completely satisfied with this summer of transfers, even with Palhinha. After all, he had closed some gaps – but surprisingly another one opened up again in his squad: “The situation is not entirely happy,” he said Pavard’s departure, who followed Josip Stanišić on loan to Leverkusen. Both could play at centre-back and right-back. Nobody in the team has that kind of defensive flexibility anymore.
No competition on the defensive
“There’s already a big gap and we’re trying to fill it up very quickly in a very short time. We have Konrad Laimer, who can play flexibly. But at the moment we have less competition, less reliability in the individual defensive positions. ” Most recently, Laimer had already played 20 minutes against Augsburg as a right-back. Against Gladbach, Noussair Mazraoui is expected to start there, as in the first two Bundesliga games.
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Source: BR24Sport on the radio September 1st, 2023 – 12:54 p.m
