Re: The Bundesliga Thread

[rwo power]

Goetze and Lewandowski didn't want to leave Bundi... they both made it clear. Dortmund was willing to offer the same wages as Bayern.

Do you have any sources for that?

[sportsczy]

Goetze and Lewandowski didn't want to leave Bundi... they both made it clear. Dortmund was willing to offer the same wages as Bayern.

Do you have any sources for that?

Remember Klopp saying that he wasn't losing his best players because of wages... that if he could keep his squad and become quasi-guaranteed of CL, then they could keep them financially.  But if his best players left and the CL revenue became uncertain, it would be a problem and the club would then need to mitigate its risk exposure.  It was during an interview.  I'll see if i can dig it up.  They were talking about the wage demands of Hummels and Reus in the future and the reporter asked him what could cause them to look at other clubs.

[rwo power]

Well, dunno if Aki Watzke would go with that. Ever since they almost went bankrupt, Dortmund are really careful with their money and I really doubt they would risk extending their wage bill to Bayern level if that would endanger the club should they miss the target CL.

[sportsczy]

Not the wage bill overall obviously... but Klopp was talking about keeping his stars and making an effort for them.  

In any case, seems like Bundi fans here are different from everywhere else.  Most bundi fans i know who aren't Bayern fans curse them for their tactics of weakening their direct competition.  If it's not a problem here, so be it.

I know that OM fans would burn managements' and players' homes if they sold/went to PSG.  The few times it has happened, thing have ended very badly for those players...  they were harassed and their careers went down the toilet.  Stopped happening period as a result. You pick a side and you stick with it.

[rwo power]

Well, here only those players get stick that totally declared for one club and then decide to leave for a rival. That's why Mario Götze and Manuel Neuer get booed, while Robert Lewandowski isn't. Same with the Dortmund fans still considering Shinji Kagawa a fan favourite and wanting him back after he left for another club.

Lewandowski and Kagawa never made a secret of the fact that they didn't want to stay at the club forever, so that was accepted. Players like Götze and Neuer, though, are considered a "Judas" by the fans of their home clubs as they first claimed they wanted to stay with the club forever and then suddenly changed mind.

[sportsczy]

You can change your mind... but don't go to Bayern ffs if they're your sworn rival.  If Bayern doesn't get Neuer or Goetze, they would go and get De Gea or some other keeper star internationally or maybe Hazard from Lille at the time.  The league would not suffer since a WC talent would be bought by Bayern even if those guys left Bundi... I don't understand the mentality.

I heard Lewandowski gets harassed all the time btw... even got into fights with Dortmund fans off the pitch i thought.

My problem is that Bayern gets better AND looks to weaken its direct opponents. That's a crap way to do things. It doesn't have to be that way.

[rwo power]

Well, if a player from Köln goes to Leverkusen or Gladbach, it would be worse than if he'd go to Bayern. Actually this makes the situation of Christoph Kramer somewhat delicate. He is currently on loan at Gladbach who are "sworn rivals" of Leverkusen and they want to keep Kramer, while Leverkusen want to keep him, too.

[sportsczy]

it's just different in Bundi i guess... i mean, sworn rivals would never loan each other players in the leagues i follow more closely. To me, Kramer is completely innocent here. He can do what he wants. The clubs made a mess of things in this situation, not him.

[rwo power]

Well, the Bundesliga even tops this with the fact that loaned players are allowed (and even expected) to play against their parent clubs even when they are bitter rivals or compete for the same spot, which would be unheard of for English clubs. As one says - different countries, different customs.

[iftikhar]

I don't like Munich (just as other rich/big clubs). But the fact is players like Lewa or Gotze would have left for a bigger club (other than Munich) and the parent club would have been weakened. The problem is the vast gap in wealth between Munich and other clubs and not the predatory nature of Munich.

[McAgger]

Viva please don't include Liverpool with oil money clubs like City in the same sentence. Anything we spend comes from our generated revenue. We can't afford anywhere near the wages Bayern can, or any other top money clubs.

We are so shit in the market mainly because we are already shopping in the hand-me-down market of players whose demands are low. We can never compete for the actual top stars that most of us dream for Liverpool to sign. Also doesn't help that we have terribly incompetent people running the club's transfers.

Having money for transfer fees is only half the game.

To re-confirm the wages you are rumoured to offer Sterling at 160K Pounds a week roughly translates to around 9-9.5M Euros a season odd I guess. That is more than what Lewa, Robben, etc get at Bayern.

Also Suarez 200K pounds a week contract translates to what 14-15M Euros a year, comfortably breaching Bayern's wage structure where the highest paid player earns between 10-12M a year.

You also spend ridiculous money. Lallana cost what more than 30M Pounds? So you buy 35M Euros for Lallana, close to 30M Euros for Marko and close to 25M Euros for Lovren when you have Skrtel, Sakho, Agger and Toure.

You spend lavishly and pay lavishly. Problem is you do it poorly.

We Benatia for 26M, Dante for 5M, Robben/Ribery for 25M, Lewa for free, Goetze for 37M and Martinez 40M are our record transfers. There's not a god man bust in any transfer dealings. Maybe Rafinha is you count he cost 6-7M and is an okay back-up.

Even our back-up LB Bernat who cost only 10M is better than Moreno who cost much more.

I think it's just very poor planning on Liverpool's part and wastage of money.

Southampton bought Tadic and Pelle for 8/9M each and Liverpool bought Marko and Lallana for 30/35M Euros

Sterling will not be getting 160k. Quit reading into bullshit rumors.

Suarez was never on 200k. The most he earned with Liverpool was 160k. It was going to go up this season to 200k if he had stayed but the the club knew a year go that he was leaving. Putting 200k in the contract and leaking it out to the media is basic politics to back their bullshit claims that they will spend top dollar if players actually perform for us. 160k I believe is the most we have ever paid a player in our history in wages.

First off, like I said we have money to be able to afford highish transfer fees. But the fact that we can't pay the wages for those high transfer fees already means we won't be shopping in the high end market of top players. The hand-me-down market is much lower in quality and there is a higher percentage of bust in transfers. And also I already said, we have absolutely garbage people in charge of transfers.

Secondly, you might want to start doing much better research. Because those numbers are not anywhere close to what we actually paid.

Lallana was 25m pound (not over 30) paid over a few years if he meets incentives. We paid 16m pounds outright for him.

Markovic was 19m pounds (so 24m euros or so) only 12m euros went to Benfica. Because of the 3rd party ownership we had to pay double to both parties otherwise this would have been a very nice deal.

Paid 16m pounds for Lovren rising to 20m if he meets certain incentives (which he most likely won't). Skrtel and Toure are shit and Brendan had some sort of personal problem with Sakho and Agger. Irregardless of that, we conceded 50 goals last season we were always in a for a CB badly. Just chose Lovren completely ineptly.

Don't even compare Bayerns transfers with us. You have a monopoly over the whole talented Germany/Bundesliga market. Even if we pay 3x as much as you, we wouldn't be able to get those players you get.

Moreno had a better season than Bernat last season and had more hype around him, I see no problem him costing 4-5m euros more. And Bernat is not better than him. You put Moreno in Bayerns line up and Bernat in Liverpool's you'll be saying the opposite.

While your main premise of us wasting money is absolutely correct. You did NOT understand my point at all. So I will repeat, we DO have the money to spend on transfers fees but we can't match the wages other top teams can. We have a wage structure in place that will require players to sign for us and do well before being offered wages you really can get somewhere else from the get go.

[McAgger]

Also midtable Everton beat the second best Germany team away from home

Where you at, hapless?

[rwo power]

Well, someone obviously put a voodoo curse on the GErman teams this weeks. Wolfsburg had 38 shots on goals but didn't score, similar to Leverkusen, while the opponent just was more efficient and did score from the few chances they had. I'm sure ther must be some voodoo dolls of our strikers hidden somewhere.

[dostoevsky]

Goetze and Lewandowski didn't want to leave Bundi... they both made it clear.  Dortmund was willing to offer the same wages as Bayern.  If Bayern wasn't poaching them, who says they would have left?  Only reason they wanted to leave was because they saw that Dortmund was getting poached and wouldn't be elite as a result.  

Nobody is talking about the financial health of Bundi... you're trying to use a logical fallacy to deflect from the subject Hans.  The point is how you have one superteam, Bayern, that maintains its position by systematically destroying any competitors that come along by poaching their best players.  Happened with Leverkusen in the early 2000s.  Happening with Dortmund now.

The crazy thing is that it didn't used to happen before in Bundi... it's a phenomenon of the past 15 years.  Voeller, Kirsten, Allofs, etc. had more pride than that.  It's just amazing to me that players have so little respect for the clubs that made them.  These transfers are all hostile... it's not like they're amicable, which would be more ok.

Goetze is originally from Bavaria though, is it really so surprising that he'd have an interest in playing for Bayern? There are also cultural reasons behind not wanting to leave Germany and family concerns.

The only reason I brought that up is because I don't really understand just what you mean when you speak of what is best for the league. Most people end up discussing wildly different factors because it's a fairly abstract concept. In the end though, Bayern don't have much of a loyalty to their league and few other clubs act in such a manner.

My main point is that Bayern's attitude is hardly unique, they've just had greater success in grabbing their rival's players. You spoke of such deals not taking place in Serie A, however I dispute that this has anything to do with money. In the past, clubs had no issue with taking advantage of fantastic Parma and Lazio sides when they overstepped themselves financially to grab the likes of Buffon, Thuram, Crespo, Nedved and Nesta. The major difference now is that the top clubs no longer have the financial power to poach players from rising domestic rivals. When Napoli established themselves as regular contenders for second spot, do you think the Serie A clubs stayed away from Cavani, Lavezzi and Hamsik out of respect for Napoli? They did so because they simply couldn't compete financially with international offers, not because of their attitude towards the rest of the league. The likes of Lamela and Pastore would have stayed in Italy in a past financial climate. The lack of important transfers between Serie A clubs is only representative of the lack of capital in the peninsula and nothing else. When there's little money involved, such as Bosman transfers, players still move directly between the clubs, such as Pirlo and Mexes.

Even in England, it's less an attitude than a lack of opportunities. When a contract or personal situation allows for an opportunity though, any English club would want to pounce and they do. Tevez to City, Torres to Chelsea, Van Persie to United, Insert Arsenal Player Here to City. The perfect analogy to Goetze's situation is actually Suarez where Arsenal lodged a bid designed to trigger a clause they incorrectly believed would acquire Suarez. Just as Bayern did to Dortmund, they tried to make Liverpool powerless, it's just that here the contract situation was not in their favour as they believed. As soon as Suarez became the subject of international attention, they were simply priced out. In a similar fashion, Bale and Modric were the fancy of many top English clubs but they simply weren't willing to match the bids from Spain. If Spurs weren't asking for such ridiculous sums, there's every reason to believe the likes of United would have grabbed them if they could.

I don't have any affection for Bayern however I feel like the hatred they currently receive has more to do with their directors' unusual capacity to hypocritically mouth off in the press than their actual behaviour in the market. If they hadn't made such a big deal of claiming they wouldn't target Dortmund just before they very obviously targeted Dortmund, it wouldn't be such a big issue. They're just doing what's best for their club though and took advantage of some excellent opportunities that arose thanks to the specific contract situations. You couldn't get a transfer such as Goetze's where one side is powerless arising between Madrid and Barcelona nowadays because the contract clauses are ludicrously high. They're not designed to facilitate transfers but ward off offers, it's an entirely different situation. Whether players are willing to move will always be an individual choice though. Some will simply never care about anything other than their career, others will have a certain respect for their current institutions, that's just how people are.

[titosantill]

Well, here only those players get stick that totally declared for one club and then decide to leave for a rival. That's why Mario Götze and Manuel Neuer get booed, while Robert Lewandowski isn't. Same with the Dortmund fans still considering Shinji Kagawa a fan favourite and wanting him back after he left for another club.

Lewandowski and Kagawa never made a secret of the fact that they didn't want to stay at the club forever, so that was accepted. Players like Götze and Neuer, though, are considered a "Judas" by the fans of their home clubs as they first claimed they wanted to stay with the club forever and then suddenly changed mind.

is that the case? or is it more a case of their backgrounds? i mean, neither lewa nor kagawa are german and they didn't even start their youth careers at dortmund. neuer is not only german but is a hometown boy from gelsenkirchen, home of schalke04, and gotze's youth career was at dortmund, so they've practically grown up with that inherent dislike for bayern that a lot of footy clubs in germany and the towns or cities that tutored them probably have....i think that has more to do with it than them declaring whether they'd leave or not....these days in football its like when people say they'll stay forever, you better start preparing for a transfer....the hometown boy or youth product leaving for the big bad bully rival resonates more to me than what they said or didn't say

[titosantill]

Also, name me one top league in Europe where rival teams sell their best players to each other like it's done with Bayern in Bundi.  And i mean real rivals.  Do you see Man U, Man City and Chelsea transacting?  Juve, Napoli, Roma, Milan Lazio, etc.?  PSG, OM and Lyon?  I already mentioned La Liga.  It's just not done.

Only spineless club that i can recently recall in those leagues is Arsenal.

well its quite common in serie a, players move from juve milan and inter with relative ease, a host of players have played for all three clubs with little controversy involved, if any serie a fans can point out how such deals happen almost harmlessly; sometimes the serie a big 3 don't even have problems loaning to one another... and , inter milan had a period when they MunichED serie a during the calciopolli, and it wasn't just ex-juve players they munichED.....i do agree its not in the same capacity as bayern, considering that happened during the calciopoli scandal. i can't blame bayern though, not their fault other clubs can't appease their players/staff

[rwo power]

Well, with Manuel Neuer it was because he was a member of the "Buerschenschaft", a Schalke Ultrà fangroup. You can imagine that any ultràs don't take well to "traitors". That was actually why both the Bayern ultràs and the Schalke ultràs gave him a lot of stick.

And Mario Götze said only two or three weeks before he left for Bayern something like that he would stay with Dortmund for years. If someone says a thing like that when already knowing it is a lie, you can also imagine that fans won't take that lightly either. Things would probably only have been worse for him if he would have left for Schalke. (And Neuer for Dortmund XD)

Neither Shinji Kagawa nor Robert Lewandowski were either rooted in the club or fan scene, nor did they say they would stay until the end of their careers, so people pretty much expected them to leave and thus it was sort of okay that they left.

[RealGunner]

FriedBurger to hammer stuttgart tonight?

[ProXima]

Also midtable Everton beat the second best Germany team away from home

Did you watch the game at all? Undeservedly disallowed goal for Wolfsburg and a lot of bad luck... VfL was a much better.

[rwo power]

Yeah, Wolfsburg had a staggering 38 shots on goal, they said at Sky - they only forgot to drink their target water

[Hapless_Hans]

Goetze and Lewandowski didn't want to leave Bundi... they both made it clear.  Dortmund was willing to offer the same wages as Bayern.  If Bayern wasn't poaching them, who says they would have left?  Only reason they wanted to leave was because they saw that Dortmund was getting poached and wouldn't be elite as a result.  

Nobody is talking about the financial health of Bundi... you're trying to use a logical fallacy to deflect from the subject Hans.  The point is how you have one superteam, Bayern, that maintains its position by systematically destroying any competitors that come along by poaching their best players.  Happened with Leverkusen in the early 2000s.  Happening with Dortmund now.

The crazy thing is that it didn't used to happen before in Bundi... it's a phenomenon of the past 15 years.  Voeller, Kirsten, Allofs, etc. had more pride than that.  It's just amazing to me that players have so little respect for the clubs that made them.  These transfers are all hostile... it's not like they're amicable, which would be more ok.

Goetze is originally from Bavaria though, is it really so surprising that he'd have an interest in playing for Bayern? There are also cultural reasons behind not wanting to leave Germany and family concerns.

The only reason I brought that up is because I don't really understand just what you mean when you speak of what is best for the league. Most people end up discussing wildly different factors because it's a fairly abstract concept. In the end though, Bayern don't have much of a loyalty to their league and few other clubs act in such a manner.

My main point is that Bayern's attitude is hardly unique, they've just had greater success in grabbing their rival's players. You spoke of such deals not taking place in Serie A, however I dispute that this has anything to do with money. In the past, clubs had no issue with taking advantage of fantastic Parma and Lazio sides when they overstepped themselves financially to grab the likes of Buffon, Thuram, Crespo, Nedved and Nesta. The major difference now is that the top clubs no longer have the financial power to poach players from rising domestic rivals. When Napoli established themselves as regular contenders for second spot, do you think the Serie A clubs stayed away from Cavani, Lavezzi and Hamsik out of respect for Napoli? They did so because they simply couldn't compete financially with international offers, not because of their attitude towards the rest of the league. The likes of Lamela and Pastore would have stayed in Italy in a past financial climate. The lack of important transfers between Serie A clubs is only representative of the lack of capital in the peninsula and nothing else. When there's little money involved, such as Bosman transfers, players still move directly between the clubs, such as Pirlo and Mexes.

Even in England, it's less an attitude than a lack of opportunities. When a contract or personal situation allows for an opportunity though, any English club would want to pounce and they do. Tevez to City, Torres to Chelsea, Van Persie to United, Insert Arsenal Player Here to City. The perfect analogy to Goetze's situation is actually Suarez where Arsenal lodged a bid designed to trigger a clause they incorrectly believed would acquire Suarez. Just as Bayern did to Dortmund, they tried to make Liverpool powerless, it's just that here the contract situation was not in their favour as they believed. As soon as Suarez became the subject of international attention, they were simply priced out. In a similar fashion, Bale and Modric were the fancy of many top English clubs but they simply weren't willing to match the bids from Spain. If Spurs weren't asking for such ridiculous sums, there's every reason to believe the likes of United would have grabbed them if they could.

I don't have any affection for Bayern however I feel like the hatred they currently receive has more to do with their directors' unusual capacity to hypocritically mouth off in the press than their actual behaviour in the market. If they hadn't made such a big deal of claiming they wouldn't target Dortmund just before they very obviously targeted Dortmund, it wouldn't be such a big issue. They're just doing what's best for their club though and took advantage of some excellent opportunities that arose thanks to the specific contract situations. You couldn't get a transfer such as Goetze's where one side is powerless arising between Madrid and Barcelona nowadays because the contract clauses are ludicrously high. They're not designed to facilitate transfers but ward off offers, it's an entirely different situation. Whether players are willing to move will always be an individual choice though. Some will simply never care about anything other than their career, others will have a certain respect for their current institutions, that's just how people are.

First of all, there's no doubt that Rummenigge is a massive prick. His public comments about Reus' release clause were unacceptable and I don't know a Bayern fan who approves of them.
But even that, unless you believe public comments damage another clubs ability to win football games, doesn't add anything to sports' (and other's) claims that Bayern is weakening the league through weakening their competition.

And that's what ticks me off, the gratuitous way this stuff is thrown around without thinking twice, while their core argument is obviously wrong.

You laid out in detail what was also my point: that why transfers happen or do not happen has nothing to do with ethics, fairness, or honour anywhere.
It has to do with where players want to go, who cannot afford them, who can't, who has the most pull and money.

Our 'loyalty' to our league is that we want to win it, just like every other club.
And, of course, that we comply by and support it's basic framework, a part of which is the ban on 'owners' (the 50+1 rule), and for example a relatively balanced tv money distribution system.
This distribution system means for example that we receive far, far less tv money than, say, the Spanish giants who negotiate their TV right INDIVIDUALLY, so much for loyalty and solidarity with the league. Which is why Real Madrid fans mouthing off makes me very, very angry.
We also get for example HALF of what the last placed club in the Premier League receives from the league TV money.

Which leads to the second point, the Bundesliga isn't as rich as the Premier league.
Bayern's advantage stems from our commercial revenue and sponsorship deals which are far superior than any other Bundesliga club's, and that is the result of decades of good management, simply put.
It does not stem from outside money.
Of course we use our position of strength to our advantage, and to 'bully' our competition as in, we can financially outmuscle them.
I just happen to think it's very hypocritical for supporters of other top clubs to claim that isn't something anyone does, or would do.
If we take the Reus scenario for example, is anyone going to tell me that if, say Sterling could leave Liverpool in summer for 20m pounds, United, Chelsea, City, hell Arsenal, Everton etc pp wouldn't think about it? Ffs, they would jump at the opportunity.
Or if Isco could, and wanted to, leave for 25m €, Barca wouldn't think about it? pls.

That's the next point.
Because there are no sugar daddys allowed, Bundesliga clubs have to grow.
IF they manage to grow that usually corresponds to, or is propelled by, a distinctive good run with players who become 'top' players in the process.
Yet this always means that there a phases of 'overachievement' involved, when the footballing achievement runs ahead of the actual financial position of the club. So that was the case with Kloppmund, the contracts of players like Reus then become disproportionally low compared to their hype. Reus still has the clause that was added back when he joined, when Dortmund were in less a position of authority in negotiations than they would be now. In some cases they managed to renew with higher wages, in some cases they have sold. In Reus' case, it's still undecided.
Because the phase of overachievement naturally means that the players of these teams become transfer targets for structurally bigger clubs. Structurally bigger clubs are other leagues top clubs, and us.

So fans of other European top clubs on here spent every day of every transfer window of the last 2-3 years fapping over buying Reus, Hummels, Gündogan, Lewandowski, Klopp, preferably ALL OF THEM AT ONCE, but they become holier-than-thou when Götze and Lewandowski join us, because poor Dortmund is being destroyed by Buyern etc pp ad nauseam.

There's butthurt involved, and the butthurt turns to faux outrage which conveniently confuses cause and effect in all of this.

Because Dortmund quite obviously were, and aren't yet, in a position where they can hold on to all of their star players.
You can call the players ungrateful, since the reason they are star players is because of Dortmund's good work, but that's the way it is.

We get these players because Dortmund can't keep them, not  because bad Bayern 'poach' them. Bad Utd, bad Arsenal, bad Real, bad Barca are trying to poach them too

Which leads me to the second, and most glaring point why this recent hand wringing is a convenient confusion of cause and effect infused by butthurt.
People, like sports here, keep claiming we can walk the league because we buy the competition players to destroy rivals.
Now it's absolutely true that Dortmunds back to back league wins annoyed us and spurred us to decisively better them again.
Yet of course we won the league with record points along with the CL in 2012/13 without ANY player of Dortmund.
We won it because we got better and rose to the challenge, also of a repeated lost CL final.
Because our team, which included 5 starters from our youth along with players mostly bought from abroad, was strengthened, clicked and played better than the rest.
Buying Dortmund players to weaken them played absolutely no part in our success that season, which had us finishing 25 points ahead of a Dortmund featuring Götze and Lewandowski.

I think it's important to remember this fact here, lol.

Of course our money, since we can pay more than Dortmund, makes us an attractive destination for players like Götze and Lewandowski, but we are also more attractive due to the recent success, which wasn't like that to the same extent in the years before.
After all, half a dozen other clubs would pay more than Dortmund too. But the players at this moment in time felt joining us was good for their career, which I guess couldn't necessarily be said for Real Madrid or Manchester United, who practically ruined the careers of two of Dortmund's stars who they 'poached'. If I may refresh their memory.
So sports' argument that Lewa and Götze wanted to stay in Germany anyway (how can he know?) as if that was a given without context, and as if they'd surely stayed in Dortmund if we hadn't taken them away is very sleight of hand, to put it mildly. They stayed in Germany because we were more attractive to them than all the other top clubs that also wanted them.
Which means our strength is not weakening the league, it's making it more attractive for top players.

So all this is why I'm sick and tired of these nonchalant, demonstratively false and thoroughly hypocritical accusations.

[rwo power]

@Hans

Great post!

BTW, that's something that really annoys me a lot, too - the fans of many PL fans that line up BL players they think would be cool to buy as if the Bundesliga was just some self-service outlet for the Premier League.

(And funnily they just don't see what they already have, especially where GKs are concerned - I mean, they let both Ron-Robert Zieler and Loris Karius go even though their were at English academies for a while...)

[RealGunner]

ffs freiburg

[rwo power]

Roman Bürki with a very embarassing error at first, but fortunately he recovered fast from it and saved well from Harnik.

Aaaaand 1:1.

IMO Sven Ulreich could have done better there.
And this time he did better and then was saved by the bar ^^

[urbaNRoots]

Excellent first half of football!

Bundesliga all the way

I'm really torn about Rüdiger, I don't like the kind of defenders like him - heavily reliant on physicality - but I have to say this was an impressive first half from him. I'd like to see him play CB more often with the national team instead of RB.

[RealGunner]

Get in there 1-1

Pls win freiburg

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