Hoeness in bizarre claim over Blues’ transfer plan
BAYERN Munich president Uli Hoeness has claimed to have the inside track on how Pep Guardiola signs players at City.
The Bundesliga champions are preparing for a summer of change. Franck Ribery, who joined the Munich club in 2007, and Arjen Robben, who came in 2009, are expected to leave at the end of the season and the president has previously said that a lot will happen in what he called the ‘second stage of the upheaval’.
As he announced more details of the club’s plans, Hoeness thought it right to contrast the way Bayern go about making big signings with the way City do.
“My friend Pep told me what happens when he wants a player who costs EUR100m,” he is reported to have said at a financial fair.
“He gets some videos of the player and flies to see the Sheikh [Mansour]. Then there is an opulent meal, you look over the videos and the Sheikh transfers the sum.
“I’m proud that in such cases we aren’t going to the credit department but the bank’s fixedincome department.”
City have, in fact, never signed a player that costs anywhere close to EUR100m - Riyad Mahrez is their most expensive signing. The club announced profits for the fourth consecutive season back in September, with record revenue of more than £500m and £10.4m of profit.
Bayern, meanwhile, have struggled since Guardiola swapped Munich for Manchester in 2016. The Germans have had three managers in under three seasons, with renewed pressure on the future of Niko Kovac following their tame Champions League last-16 exit to Liverpool and a serious challenge from Borussia Dortmund in the league.
Having served 18 months of a three-and-a-half-year prison sentence for evading EUR28.5m in tax, Hoeness was re-elected as club president of Bayern in November 2016. CITY will have to keep winning for a 25-year period to be considered among the world’s biggest clubs, according to their former captain Richard Dunne.
The Blues have won three Premier League titles since Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan took over in 2008, along with the FA Cup and four Carabao Cup successes.
The Blues’ best showing in the Champions League came with their run to the semi-finals in 2016, and Pep Guardiola’s side will match that feat should they beat Tottenham in this season’s last eight.
“If City want to become as big a club as United or Liverpool and have a huge fanbase in all corners of the world, they would have to keep winning for 25 years and more,” Dunne said.
“If they can win trophies every year for that long, they will have two generations of supporters that have watched them enjoy that success and it’s more than possible when you see the foundations that have now been put in place at the club.
“You don’t just win a few trophies and become the biggest club in the world, so it will take a couple of generations for City to build up a fan base outside of their support in Manchester that will take them close to clubs like United and Liverpool.
“A new generation of kids are now growing up looking at Manchester City in a very different light and seeing them as a club that are winning trophies and playing great football,” he said. “They will start supporting City now and their kids will follow in their footsteps. That’s how United and Liverpool have built up such a massive fanbase.”