The English Football Thread

[Vesper 29,171]

Inside Leroy Sane’s transfer (and the bad blood between Bayern and Man City)

https://theathletic.com/1906940/2020/07/03/sane-bayern-city-munich-manchester-leroy-guardiola-hoeness-soriano/

The latest apology came on Thursday night. Leroy Sane was not yet a Bayern Munich player but there were already pictures of him in the famous red shirt all over social media, so it was sporting director Hasan Salihamidzic’s turn, picking up the phone and calling Txiki Begiristain to assure the Manchester City director of football that they had not intended for it to be this way.

It was only last summer that City CEO Ferran Soriano had written a formal letter to his Bayern counterparts, expressing his club’s dismay at the public courting of Sane via the media, leading the Germans’ then-president Uli Hoeness to express his regret.

Twelve months on Sane is, at last, a Bayern player after the clubs managed to put their vast differences aside and agree a deal that could rise to €60 million.

It is the first time that City have lost one of their star players against their wishes since their takeover in 2008, and they have done so to perhaps the most vocal critics of their ownership model throughout the last decade. Roberto Mancini first threatened to have it out with Karl-Heinz Rummenigge in 2010.

The fact that Sane will not play for City again, despite not being able to start his Bayern career until next season, makes clear just how keen both he and City were to bring this saga to a close. The now-deposed back-to-back Premier League champions had wanted to keep him, offering him a new contract two years ago and keeping that deal on the table even after he suffered knee ligament damage last August, at a time when Bayern decided to wait and see.

But Sane’s mind had long been made up. He and manager Pep Guardiola had become exasperated with each other over the past two years (Sane believed he should be playing more, Guardiola believed he needed to do much more to earn it), the winger and his partner had grown to dislike Manchester, and despite differences between his parents and his partner, there was a common desire to move to Munich, where he will earn considerably more money than he did at City. There is also the sporting project offered at Bayern and everything that means to a top German player.

While City indicated that they would be willing to let him go on a free if Bayern didn’t match their valuation this summer, sources in Germany believe the reality is somewhat different. When Sane made it clear to City in June that he would be happy to wait a year and leave for nothing, the club were supposedly spooked and decided to strike a deal with Bayern as soon as possible.

As is often the case with transfers like this, particularly between two clubs with as little common ground as City and Bayern, there are two versions.

Transfer fee, wages and the whys and wherefores are all up for debate.

---

When Guardiola revealed, bluntly, at a press conference just two weeks ago that Sane “does not want to extend his contract” and that he would be leaving City either this summer or next, it was designed to serve as a line in the sand. Everything was out in the open, everybody knew Sane’s intentions and, if you looked closely enough, how City felt about it.

Yet few expected everything to be resolved within a fortnight. Given the depth of ill-feeling towards each other, it is a wonder they managed to agree on anything at all.

Some of the facts are straightforward. Over the past two weeks, the clubs’ sporting directors — Salihamidzic and Begiristain — conducted talks in a “very cordial, businesslike manner”, according to a source close to the negotiations.

A sporting director’s job description demands that business comes first, so relationships with the game’s most influential figures must be maintained. As a result, the two men were able to reach a satisfactory conclusion, despite the strong feelings of some of their colleagues. Everything ended amicably between City and Bayern.

The risk of another injury scuppering the move for a second time was a factor in the immediacy of the deal, but City were in a hurry to let Sane go anyway. They insist he would not have played much for the club for the rest of this season, as Guardiola felt he was not committed.

There was no element of rushing a deal through before the Court of Arbitration for Sport’s ruling on City’s appeal against their two-year Champions League ban, as has been speculated. Due to COVID-enforced changes to Financial Fair Play rules, club accounts for 2020 and 2021 will be grouped together and averaged out, so there is no difference between June, July or even December.

The only sense of significance regarding the timing comes from the Bayern end. Salihamidzic became an official member of the club’s board on Wednesday, July 1, and the fact he managed to thrash out deals for Sane and Tanguy Kouassi — an 18-year-old defender who has joined on a free from Paris Saint-Germain — the day before added to the sense he had pulled off a huge coup.

Sources close to Bayern believe their capture of Kouassi on a free transfer, which blindsided PSG and left their coach Thomas Tuchel fuming, reinforced for City the real possibility of losing Sane for nothing.

Salihamidzic was pointedly praised by CEO Rummenigge for “successfully concluding” a transfer saga that had occupied Bayern’s minds for well over a year. It was Salihamidzic, a former midfielder for the club, who had championed Sane’s signing early on and he was able to convince the board and then-new coach Hansi Flick the winger was a better fit for Bayern than Timo Werner. The RB Leipzig striker had already provisionally agreed terms with Bayern in spring 2019 but then became disillusioned over their inertia in pushing through a deal that summer.

Generally speaking, it is common for two clubs to both try to claim the high ground over a big transfer, and there is certainly an element of that here.

Such inter-club politics also helps explain the initial discrepancy in Sane’s reported wages. City sources indicate that he will be on a monster €22 million per year (more than €430,000 per week) at the Allianz Arena. At the Bayern end, it’s said to be “only” €17 million (not including signing-on fee), which has come down — due to the pandemic — from the €20 million he initially agreed with them last summer. Bayern have not disputed City’s figures that the deal is worth €49 million plus €11 million in add-ons, however.

City believe they have got a great deal for Sane because they recouped €60 million for a player with one year left on his contract amid the uncertainty of the global pandemic and so soon after a serious knee injury, with all the doubts those can bring.

Bayern, in turn, believe they have pulled off a masterstroke by getting a key player for considerably less than the €120-€150 million fee that had been mooted by City in August. By playing him in the Community Shield, the game where he got injured, City lost out on an extra €70 million or so, plus the €8 million they have paid him in wages while he was recuperating.

City had been working to extend Sane’s contract since summer 2018 to try to avoid exactly this type of situation. It was around that time that Chelsea considered making a move. Despite the tensions between City and Bayern, a move to London would surely have been a less palatable option for the top brass in Manchester.

Marina Granovskaia, Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich’s most trusted deal-maker, is a major admirer of the 24-year-old and seriously considered putting a move in place, but ultimately felt it would have been too complicated to pull off.

Indeed, it was not always easy for Bayern or even City to conduct talks with the player. Sane was initially represented by his parents and the first contact between the clubs was through Giovanni Branchini, an Italian agent who has done plenty of business with both teams in the past.

But last summer, Sane joined David Beckham’s agency before Beckham — the owner of new MLS franchise Inter Miami — quickly had to recuse himself due to US soccer regulations. After that, he moved to LIAN Sports, which ruffled a few feathers at Bayern but ultimately landed him an impressive contract.

---

While Begiristain and Salihamidzic were able to reach a conclusion that surely suits all parties, despite all the crowing, it is unlikely to bring an end to the mutual antipathy between City and Bayern.

That bad feeling goes all the way back to City’s 2008 takeover and Bayern’s three most powerful executives — Rummenigge, Hoeness and former president Franz Beckenbauer — making it clear, right from the start, that they were not prepared to sit back and quietly watch them try to get a place at football’s top table.

One specific comment gets to the heart of this conflict more than any other.

City brought in lawyers on one occasion when Hoeness reportedly claimed that every time Guardiola wanted a player costing over €100 million, he would put together some video clips and the transfer would be waved through before “the Sheikh raises the price of oil to recoup the money”.

A highly placed source at City described it privately as “the remark of a smug, arrogant egotist”.

As it turned out, that quote had been mistranslated. Hoeness did not suggest the Sheikh manipulates oil markets (which is potentially libellous) but that he simply sells more — “he opens up the gas tap a few millimetres more, and he’s even again”.

Of course, the sentiment is very similar.

City believe it is a case of old money versus new, while Bayern protest it is not so much the source of the Manchester club’s money, but that the supply of it is theoretically infinite. While they have dedicated themselves to forging hugely lucrative commercial partnerships, they feel City are state-owned and that they distort the market.

Senior Bayern sources also insist there is no personal animosity towards City and their owners but they’ve come to understand that the English club’s Abu Dhabi-based backers see it that way. Indeed, City believe several comments over the years have strayed close to xenophobia.

City had also deemed it hypocritical, to some extent, that during the public courting of Sane last summer, Bayern’s then-manager Nico Kovac also said they had to “fight against states and billionaires” in the transfer market, naming Abu Dhabi, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Qatar were commercial partners for Bayern at the time, and still are.

Those public comments about Sane — Kovac saying he was “confident” a deal would get done and various Bayern players welcoming the move — are another sore point. Although the final negotiations were civilised, City feel Bayern’s strategy only strengthened the player’s resolve to leave. However, it must be said that he had already indicated his desire to do so, which is precisely why the public comments started.

Soriano wrote to Bayern and, to their credit, Hoeness and Kovac apologised publicly, although the latter’s contrition was not exactly fulsome. He said of his earlier comments: “I always speak the truth. What I said was absolutely right and is verified.”

City feel it is another example of Bayern lacking class, while Bayern see it as par for the course at top clubs, especially once there is already an agreement over personal terms (as there was in this case). Clubs in continental Europe are generally more accepting of this than their English counterparts.

Although City have never responded publicly, they were unimpressed by what they perceived to be aggressive tactics in the pursuit of Sane — but not necessarily surprised, given they experienced something similar with Jerome Boateng in the past.

In the case of Boateng, Bayern opened up with an £8 million offer for a player City valued nearer £18 million. City’s opinion was that it was a derisory offer. They did not make that public, however, whereas Bayern seemed outraged not to get their way and turned on City in the media. A compromise was eventually reached for the defender at around £13 million, and senior City officials still look back on that with disdain to this day.

Relations suffered previously when Guardiola was Bayern’s manager and the Bundesliga club, along with everybody else in football, knew it was City’s intention to one day to lure him to the Etihad, although Beckenbauer once claimed he had no concerns about losing Guardiola because the Catalan would not go to “a club like Manchester City”.

Guardiola and Hoeness remain friends and have dined together in Munich in recent years, while Bayern have often discussed the possibility of City being thrown out of the Champions League for FFP breaches — and they may soon get their wish.

City have found it increasingly offensive that Rummenigge and Hoeness have felt authorised to preach to them about the rights and wrongs of how to run a football club, given Hoeness received a three-year prison sentence in 2014 for fraud offences relating to the concealing of £22.4 million from tax inspectors, a year after Rummenigge accepted a €249,000 fine for not paying tax on two Rolex watches presented to him in Qatar.

Credit to the sporting directors for getting the Sane deal over the line, despite all that.

[DDA 9,703]

15 minutes ago, Fulham Broadway said:

Dirty Leeds -hopefully straight back down

Not a fan of the club but you have to respect Beilsa. He is a seriously good manager who has been incredibly unlucky at the final hurdle when managing throughout his career. I would like to see him taste abit more success because he deserves it. There is a reason why Pep and other top managers praise him as the best coach in the World. 

[Vesper 29,171]

3 minutes ago, DDA said:

Not a fan of the club but you have to respect Beilsa. He is a seriously good manager who has been incredibly unlucky at the final hurdle when managing throughout his career. I would like to see him taste abit more success because he deserves it. There is a reason why Pep and other top managers praise him as the best coach in the World. 

ORTA MIGHT FORCE LEEDS BOSS BIELSA INTO HEARTBREAKING DECISION

https://www.hitc.com/en-gb/2020/07/15/orta-might-force-leeds-boss-bielsa-into-heartbreaking-decision/

Patrick Bamford has played a fairly big role in helping Leeds United to the brink of Premier League promotion.

The 26-year-old has started 41 of the Whites’ 43 Championship games so far this season, scoring 16 times.

Leeds boss Marcelo Bielsa is evidently a huge fan of Bamford, having only started Eddie Nketiah – in Arsenal’s first XI on a regular basis since January – once between August and December.

It would be heartbreaking for Bielsa if he has to abandon his loyalty to the former Middlesbrough hitman and sign a better striker for next season if when United are back in the Premier League, but that might well be what Victor Orta demands.

Tammy Abraham, Che Adams and Dwight Gayle scored 70 Championship goals between them last season. In the Premier League this season, they have a combined 18 – and Abraham has 14 of them.

 

Point is, the Premier League is a massive step-up in class for strikers and if Bamford is only a decent goalscorer at this level, which he is, then Leeds just can’t expect him to lead their line next year.

Yes, he has other elements that make him so popular with Bielsa, but the Elland Road club need a prolific goalscorer on their long-awaited return to the big time and if Bamford isn’t prolific in the Championship, logically he could struggle in a big, big way against top-flight defenders.

It would break Bielsa’s heart if he has to demote Bamford and use him sparingly, but Orta, their Director of Football, will know it’s probably necessary.

 

 

[DDA 9,703]

6 minutes ago, Vesper said:

ORTA MIGHT FORCE LEEDS BOSS BIELSA INTO HEARTBREAKING DECISION

https://www.hitc.com/en-gb/2020/07/15/orta-might-force-leeds-boss-bielsa-into-heartbreaking-decision/

Patrick Bamford has played a fairly big role in helping Leeds United to the brink of Premier League promotion.

The 26-year-old has started 41 of the Whites’ 43 Championship games so far this season, scoring 16 times.

Leeds boss Marcelo Bielsa is evidently a huge fan of Bamford, having only started Eddie Nketiah – in Arsenal’s first XI on a regular basis since January – once between August and December.

It would be heartbreaking for Bielsa if he has to abandon his loyalty to the former Middlesbrough hitman and sign a better striker for next season if when United are back in the Premier League, but that might well be what Victor Orta demands.

Tammy Abraham, Che Adams and Dwight Gayle scored 70 Championship goals between them last season. In the Premier League this season, they have a combined 18 – and Abraham has 14 of them.

 

Point is, the Premier League is a massive step-up in class for strikers and if Bamford is only a decent goalscorer at this level, which he is, then Leeds just can’t expect him to lead their line next year.

Yes, he has other elements that make him so popular with Bielsa, but the Elland Road club need a prolific goalscorer on their long-awaited return to the big time and if Bamford isn’t prolific in the Championship, logically he could struggle in a big, big way against top-flight defenders.

It would break Bielsa’s heart if he has to demote Bamford and use him sparingly, but Orta, their Director of Football, will know it’s probably necessary.

 

 

For crying out loud.. I'm trying to get some sleep and you keep posting these interesting articles. 🤬

[Fulham Broadway 16,966]

47 minutes ago, DDA said:

Not a fan of the club but you have to respect Beilsa. He is a seriously good manager who has been incredibly unlucky at the final hurdle when managing throughout his career. I would like to see him taste abit more success because he deserves it. There is a reason why Pep and other top managers praise him as the best coach in the World. 

True, a good coach.  Meanwhile all us Chelsea old uns wish Leeds a speedy decline. Vile club like Liverpool.

[Jase 43,479]

So Liverpool, supposedly the greatest Premier League champions ever, won't be setting any new records this season... 

[Vesper 29,171]

29 minutes ago, Jason said:

So Liverpool, supposedly the greatest Premier League champions ever, won't be setting any new records this season... 

greatest my ass

1998-99 Manure or 2004-05 Chels or 2002-03 Arse would crush them in a best of 7 

and if they lost either Salah or Mane to injury they would get swept

they have fuckall for depth and that dipper MF is so vulnerable against the other 3

Henderson and Fabinho would get so overrun, Keane or Viera or Makélélé would make them shit their pants

those fullbacks of theirs would get murdered on the counter as well if they tried to bomb forward like they do now

they will end up allowing twice as many goals as we allowed on 2004-05

and Salah trying that diving shit on those teams, lololol

Shitty of 1 or 2 years ago would be far tougher

[NikkiCFC 8,067]

The problem is Leicester. Without 3 best defenders and best midfielder I cannot see them finishing over Utd.

In seasons like this when we dont fight for titles Utd, City and Liverpool failing in Europe and in the league makes season much better.

Liverpool:Atletico was one of the highlights for me now we need Utd to finish 5th and City to fail in CL.

[Jase 43,479]

5 hours ago, Vesper said:

greatest my ass

1998-99 Manure or 2004-05 Chels or 2002-03 Arse would crush them in a best of 7 

and if they lost either Salah or Mane to injury they would get swept

they have fuckall for depth and that dipper MF is so vulnerable against the other 3

Henderson and Fabinho would get so overrun, Keane or Viera or Makélélé would make them shit their pants

those fullbacks of theirs would get murdered on the counter as well if they tried to bomb forward like they do now

they will end up allowing twice as many goals as we allowed on 2004-05

and Salah trying that diving shit on those teams, lololol

Shitty of 1 or 2 years ago would be far tougher

Tell that to the English media.

[Special Juan 27,512]

Fancy both Leicester and United tonight, comfortably too.

[Vesper 29,171]

19 minutes ago, Jason said:

Tell that to the English media.

they can go fuck themselves

[Puliiszola 519]

1 minute ago, Special Juan said:

Fancy both Leicester and United tonight, comfortably too.

Can't see Leicester winning tonight. Shu's form shoukd mean some points dropped from them

[Vesper 29,171]

11 minutes ago, Special Juan said:

Fancy both Leicester and United tonight, comfortably too.

Leicester comfortably over a hot SU side?

they do not have, Ricardoo, ,Çağlar Söyüncü, and Marc Albrighton

and perhaps no Chilwell and Maddison

[Atomiswave 6,072]

Incredible how Arnold got away with that, thats a red all day, infact Saka got a red for something very similar the other day. They pick and choose everytime.

[NikkiCFC 8,067]

4 hours ago, Atomiswave said:

Incredible how Arnold got away with that, thats a red all day, infact Saka got a red for something very similar the other day. They pick and choose everytime.

Yeah it would be much better for us if he was sent off. 

[Fulham Broadway 16,966]

Come on Palarse. Woy, get 'em playing like their lives depended on it.

Come on you Blades. You Yorkshire cunts do to Vardy and co what you did to us tonight

[Pizy 18,515]

Leicester team look so mediocre. So many of their key players out. For the love of God, PLEASE win this, Sheff United!

[Vesper 29,171]

Premier League | Leicester City vs Sheffield United

http://www.sportnews.to/sports/2020/premier-league-leicester-city-vs-sheffield-united-s2/

https://www.totalsportek.com/leicester-city/