Most additions from the Bundesliga: BVB could field eleven with players from the competition

… buys the league broken

For decades, FC Bayern has had a reputation for deliberately weakening the competition with transfers: in the 1990s it was Werder Bremen, from 2013 BVB and in summer 2021 RB Leipzig was used. However, BVB has the most and most expensive additions from competitors in the Bundesliga this season – 13 players for 185.6 million euros. For this evaluation, the 2022/23 Bundesliga squads were compared and the players that the clubs signed from a current first division club were counted – it doesn’t matter whether that happened five years ago or this summer.

Most expensive deals
Bundesliga internal transfersTo overview
After the transfers of Nico Schlotterbeck (22, Freiburg), Niklas Süle (26, Bayern), Marcel Lotka (21, Hertha) and the Cologne duo Salih Özcan (24) and Anthony Modeste (34), coach Edin Terzic could set up a complete starting eleven , which consists of players who came from current top division teams.

The differences are sometimes enormous. While BVB has 13 additions from the competition in its ranks, Bayer Leverkusen only has four – the focus of both top clubs is not on free transfer players.

Not so with FC Augsburg or Union Berlin, who have eleven or eight newcomers from the German upper house and each brought six of them free of charge. In this ranking, Bayern are in the middle with seven players from the Bundesliga, but are in second place when it comes to spending EUR 139 million on them.

Football Food Chain: There is always a bigger club

So the saying “Bayern is going to ruin the league” isn’t true? Is BVB much “worse”? Depending on your point of view, you should meet at the answer “yes and yes”. Rather, the cycle of the football food chain comes into play. Whoever excels in the Bundesliga is currently recommended for BVB or RB Leipzig, and whoever excels there will be exciting for the Munich team or the Premier League – the decision as to who “breaks” whom is left to each fan himself.

With his move from FC Bayern to Borussia Dortmund, Süle made an exception to the rule and confirmed another trend: Even the record champions can no longer keep every player. David Alaba switched to Real Madrid in 2021 and Robert Lewandowski recently fulfilled his dream from FC Barcelona.

All transfers
From Salzburg to LeipzigTo overview
The 19-year-old striker Benjamin Sesko from RB Salzburg will fulfill his dream of RB Leipzig from 2023 – as the 19th footballer to move from Salzburg to the Saxons. Meanwhile, the “Red Bulls” are hoping that Munich will not develop a similar weakness for Leipzig as RB boss Oliver Mintzlaff does for Salzburg. “I hope that Bayern will come up with other ideas than bringing in our top players every year,” Mintzlaff told ServusTV.

If, for example, a BVB supporter used to complain about Bayern or a Cologne native complained about Dortmund, then imagine how a Salzburg fan must feel… Bottom line, it’s a business, the good players follow the money and that applies to third division professionals who want to play in the second division, that applied to David Raum, who wanted to move from Greuther Fürth to Hoffenheim and most recently switched to RB Leipzig.

Despite Leipzig’s perceived right of first refusal in Austria, there is still a bigger one for RB and so the Saxons missed Erling Haaland, for example, because he already wanted to move to Dortmund at the age of 19. There is always a financially more powerful or glorious club – that applies to every German club. The fact that FC Bayern is no longer signing BVB’s best footballers is also due to the fact that national competition is stimulating business, but it is primarily the transfer fees and salaries that the players say when they leave BVB – mostly to England – can call.

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