Bundesliga Transfer News: Well Played Kaiser

(Photo credit:LENNART PREISS/AFP/Getty Images)

With increased spec­u­la­tion and appar­ent player maneu­ver­ings, Bay­ern Munich have found them­selves amidst an odd news cycle about los­ing Franck Ribery. Today, Franz Beck­en­bauer made a shrewd move and announced that their tal­is­manic play­maker could leave in the sum­mer if the player him­self really wants the move. The des­ti­na­tion was con­firmed as Real Madrid where pres­i­den­tial hope­ful Flo­rentino Perez is promis­ing the French­man to regain con­trol of the club.
This is a very deci­sive and cor­rect move by der Kaiser and the Munich brass.

Why?

1. Ribery is mak­ing noises about want­ing to leave. By allow­ing him out in the sum­mer, you do not see dimin­ish­ing returns on your best player at the end of a sea­son where they are in a dog-fight for the title and have as much chance of win­ning the Champion’s League as any other team not from Catalonia.Manchester United is find­ing out just how unin­ter­ested a moody diva can be.In fact by announc­ing it now, while Perez is still try­ing to win the seat, Ribery actu­ally needs to sell him­self to all pres­i­den­tial hope­fuls and thus you see him pos­si­bly work­ing even harder.
2. They won’t have to deal with the whole “will he go or won’t he go” sto­ries that can be an imped­i­ment to a club. *cough* Berba­tov *cough*Nipped in the bud, they can con­cen­trate on how they can bet­ter their team come the sum­mer, rather than deal­ing with con­tin­gency plans or pos­tur­ing. The busi­ness of run­ning a club takes prece­dent over the busi­ness of run­ning a day care.
3. By allow­ing him to leave with 2 years to go on his cur­rent con­tract, they are sell­ing at a time when they can get opti­mum value. If it drags down to a year, teams have to sell play­ers at a cheaper price just to pro­tect them­selves against a Bosman. Any­thing over two years typ­i­cally gives the sell­ing club the power.And going back to get­ting the most out of Ribery on the field, no price has been nego­ti­ated and the French­man has a vested inter­ested in the value of the transfer.
4. No player is big­ger than the club, espe­cially a club of Bayern’s size and stature. The non­cha­lant atti­tude of the announce­ment was deliv­ered to let Ribery know that Bay­ern will be fine with­out him. And they will. So why should they sweat one player?United’s des­per­a­tion to keep Ronaldo seems so below them in con­trast to Bayern’s swift announce­ment to let Ribery go. United and Bay­ern are two of six clubs in the world that should never grovel for a player. Bay­ern reminded us that they won’t by expos­ing for the umpteenth time that another of those teams, Real Madrid, will.
5. Tac­ti­cally, it would be iffy that Ribery would be nec­es­sary next cam­paign. Sure he would be great to have, but Klins­mann seems set with the 4–4-2 and doesn’t seem set on hav­ing Ribery as a cen­tral mid­fielder. Alt­in­top and Schwe­in­steiger are a great tan­dem on the wings, and one has to sit to fit Ribery. With Tymochuk com­ing in, the com­bi­na­tion of him and Borowski would seem like a dom­i­nat­ing cen­tral pair­ing, with poten­tially Sosa to be a spark of cre­ativ­ity late. Here you have a sce­nario for team selec­tion that would make them still the envy of the rest of the league and yet it doesn’t even account for sum­mer transactions.
6. Luca Toni’s sell-on date seems to be fast approach­ing. Ribery is one of his best mates at the club. If you fig­ure that Oddo won’t be signed long term, Bay­ern are effec­tively insu­lat­ing Toni and mak­ing a move for the soon to be 32 year old for­ward more likely. With this move they could be remov­ing the two high­est wages on their pay role. And they already have Olic and Dono­van already on board at for­ward. They could be look­ing to reduce their wage bur­den over the next year that looks to be a bad one for football.
7. Even by a foot­ball player in Leder­ho­sen stan­dards, Ribery looked ridiculous.

Tagged as: Franck Ribery