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In case you haven’t been closely following the situation between Bayern Munich and their star David Alaba, here’s a quick recap: The club has officially pulled out of contract negotiations with the 27-year-old defender and is now willing. to enter into transfer negotiations. that I would see him leave the club in January. If no deal is reached (a market is expected, but not a big one in January), Alaba, one of the jewels in the crown of Bayern’s rise from Germany’s best teams to a German soccer monopoly, will will march in the best of the season. free, slap-bang in the middle of his prime.
Alaba has been a talented and loyal player for Bayern. He’s at his pinnacle, a driving force on and off the court. He helped drag a collection of players through Nico Kovac’s turbulent spell and was a key factor in turning that collection into a team.
Alaba is someone who has grown up in Bayern’s youth configuration; He signed for Austria at age 12. Since then, he has been at the center of Bayern’s plans. tar
He can play each position. That is not an exaggeration. It has, quite close, all the positions. He lines up as center back these days, but has served as a world-class left back, a standout midfield, a number eight, a traditional number 10 (“free”), an all-around support forward, and a classic wide man. pushed higher on the field. Under Pep Guardiola, when Bayern played their most dazzling and dominant football of the past two decades, Alaba would often switch between a couple of positions in a match. It was thanks to Alaba and Philipp Lahm that Guardiola, always the mad scientist, was able to take some of his outlandish theories and put them into practice, and then make them successful.
Alaba is a big problem at Bayern. And yet the club is ready and willing to move on, happy to drop the talks early in the season. He has dropped a grenade in the dressing room of the Hansi Flick triple winners. “Honestly, I am not happy at all that we have to deal with this problem this week, when we face two difficult away games against Salzburg and Dortmund,” the manager said this week, before continuing to describe the essentials. style and plans.
But there is a method to the madness of Bayern. It is not much different from the situation in which Thiago Alcantara finally ended up in Liverpool. There were more pressing issues for Thiago (he wanted a new challenge), but his contract negotiations were also halted with Bayern setting a series of “take it or leave it” deadlines. They underestimated their star, at least from the perspective of the star.
Bayern no longer operate with loyalty. It’s not even a What have you done for me lately? kind of club. It’s about ‘what can you do in two or three years?’
The club wants flexibility in the transfer market. You want resale value. When they look at a potential £ 250,000 a week price tag in Alaba that they don’t see on a major club icon, they see a 28-year-old with little resale value as he enters 30 and a player who could start a domino effect.
Bayern have been linked to the wonderful RB Leipzig Dayot Upamecano for over a year. If you factor in Upamecano’s release clause, £ 54 million as well as his projected salary, call it £ 150,000 a week, it comes to £ 77 million all-inclusive for the next three seasons, and that with a lot of sales value payoffs whether Upamecano works long term or not.
Going from one to the other makes commercial sense, if it is not the best option for the current coaching staff or even for a future coaching staff (you have to think, given his talent with the ball and his positional versatility, that Alaba would be one of the 10 best options of almost any coach in the world).
And it’s not just about the cost of Alaba’s new deal and how it compares to Upamecano’s. If it were only like this, the club could talk about the player’s experience and the relationship with the team. No. It’s about the chain effect of the Alaba deal. If Bayern is seen to be breaking their carefully crafted salary structure for Alaba, why not for Joshua Kimmich (the player around whom the club is built) or Leon Gotetzka or Serge Gnabry?
As German soccer expert Rafael Honigstein pointed out, Bayern are acting more cautiously than ever in contract negotiations. The ongoing global pandemic is playing a massive role in that, but the club is also reluctant to fall into the traps of other super clubs: pay and pay and pay to bring in and replace star players, before ending up with an inflated salary. invoice and immovable contracts. A contractual end of the world similar to that of Barcelona is the nightmare scenario for all super clubs. By canceling Alaba’s contract, Bayern believe the club will be in a stronger position in future negotiations with younger players.
It is a reality that is already looking at Liverpool and Michael Edwards head on.
Liverpool has a strict salary structure. But his recent success is destined to blow up Edwards’ carefully crafted salary structure. The club is currently putting the finishing touches on Virgil van Dijk’s new contract. Once Van Dijk signs on, Alisson, Trent Alexander-Arnold and Andy Robertson will be next in line to receive a well-earned reload, all lined up behind the club’s most valuable asset.
And in the not too distant future, there will be new deals for Sadio Mané, Mo Salah, Jordan Henderson, if only to keep the first two out of the hands of Paris Saint-Germain, Real Madrid or Barcelona.
Over the next 24 months, Liverpool are willing to commit a great deal of new money to re-build on the current deals they have with the core of their team. Review the contracts of the team’s senior players and you will notice a trend:
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Mo Salah, £ 200,000 per week, 2023
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Roberto Firmino, £ 180,000 per week, 2023
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Van Dijk (currently), £ 180,000 per week, 2023
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Jordan Henderson, £ 140,000 a week, 2023
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Sadio Mané, £ 100,000 per week, 2023
(Important: these figures, via Spotrac, do not include Liverpool’s significant bonus structure)
They all sell out in 2023 when all those stars are 30 years old. Van Dijk will be 31 years old; Henderson will be 33 years old; Mané, 30; Salah, 30; Firmino, 30 years old.
By that time, everyone except Henderson will likely have passed the £ 200,000 per week threshold. When you factor in that the likes of Alexander-Arnold (£ 40,000), Joe Gomez (£ 28,000), Andy Robertson (£ 50,000), Fabinho (£ 100,000) and Alisson will be moving towards the prime of their careers, where it is expected who are compensated as such, you can see the trend line of how Liverpool’s salary budget is about to skyrocket. As a percentage, the increases for Gomez, Robertson, Alexander-Arnold and Alisson will be massive compared to top stars; and the club will be more committed to replenishing the agreements than it is to letting the players go.
Clearly, the club wants nothing more than to double Wijnaldum’s salary package (he currently makes £ 75,000 a week) when he enters age 30. How much money can you allocate to a core of a team over 30 years old? Five feels like the absolute maximum. If we’re honest, it’s probably one or two too many.
The club will save money with James Milner and Xherdan Shaqiri going off the books for the next 24 months, not to mention that it already removed the high salaries of Adam Lallana and Dejan Lovren from the salary bill. But Liverpool have many more good, central and valuable players than at any other time in their modern history. They will have to make difficult decisions somewhere, for whatever reason (and they are not good). And it looks like that line in the sand is Wijnaldum.
And now he has Thiago’s £ 207,000 a week to add to the mix – a player who will hit 30 in the near future. Not many players (or their agents) can walk into Michael Edwards’s office and claim that they were the backbone and metronome of recent Champions League winners and perhaps the best in their position in the world. But this is the thing about this Liverpool team … a couple of those players with new deals can.
It’s Edwards and company. have been hesitant to spend on a new offering from Wijnaldum. He is to Liverpool what Alaba is to Bayern: a wonderful player, a key part of the dressing room and team concept, and really, Really difficult to replace. But it is not impossible to replace it, and it is not worth it no replacing when it could distort the financial reality of the squad and the club for the next 36 months.
All clubs – all clubs – look at the mess in Catalonia as a warning sign. Bayern have drawn their line in the arena of Alaba. Liverpool will face the same tough decisions. In Wijnaldum, it seems they have already made one. More difficult decisions will soon be made.
Alaba’s situation is instructive. The short-term pain will be real, but Bayern is betting on long-term sustainability rather than emotion.
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