Mostly Joker this season
©IMAGO
FC Bayern Munich is pushing ahead with squad planning for the coming season and has announced that Raphaël Guerreiro will no longer be a member of the team. The expiring contract with the 32-year-old left-back, who can also be used flexibly in midfield, is expiring and will not be extended. The decision was made by mutual consent.
Bayern sports director Max Eberl explained: “We would like to thank Rapha for the time we spent together: Rapha was always reliable on the pitch, and characters like him enrich every dressing room. The conversations with him were good, trusting and understanding. Now we are concentrating with him on our goals until the summer – together we still want to achieve a lot.”
After Leon Goretzka (31), Guerreiro will be the second over-30 professional to leave the record champions for free at the end of the season. With a market value of 6 million euros, he is one of the more valuable Bundesliga professionals who can change clubs without a transfer fee. It is still unclear where the 65-time Portuguese international will go. There were last rumors of interest from clubs like Benfica and Juventus in December. The native Frenchman has not yet played in Portugal in his career. In 2013 he moved from his youth club SM Caen to FC Lorient, from where he moved to Borussia Dortmund following the successful European Championship 2016. For BVB he played 224 games (40 goals/50 assists), by far the most in his career.
Bayern finally signed Guerreiro on a free transfer from their black and yellow Bundesliga rivals in 2023. He was used regularly, especially due to the numerous and, in the case of the torn cruciate ligament, long absences of regular left-back Alphonso Davies (25). There are now 89 games, twelve goals and eight assists. This season, Guerreiro is mostly a joker, while Josip Stanisic (25) and U21 international Tom Bischof (20) were more often on the left side in the starting line-up.
