Bayern Munich will sanction the departure of Thiago if they receive an offer of €30m during the current transfer window.
Talk of the Spaniard leaving Bavaria came about in a fairly sudden manner, shortly after the German giants secured a league and cup double at the end of the season.
Since then the speculation has intensified, with the Spaniard thought to want to depart Bayern in search of a fresh challenge as he nears his 30th birthday. Of all the sides linked with signing him, Liverpool have been the club most hotly tipped to secure his signature.
With just one year left on his deal with Die Roten, discussions over a price have began to emerge, with the latest updates coming courtesy of German publication Sport Bild. It is claimed that Hans-Dieter Flick’s side would allow the midfielder to leave if a bid of €30m was lodged this summer.
For a player of his quality who still has plenty of years left to play at the top level, that fee could be something of a bargain. That said, Bayern are yet to receive any offers for the 29-year-old Thiago.
Confirmation of Thiago’s desire to leave the club was offered by Bayern CEO Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, who stated that he had asked the club for the chance of a new experience, saying: “Some time ago, he told us that he would like to do something new before his career ends. To this date, we have not been in contact with any club about him. I don’t know if Thiago has talked to a potential new club himself.”
No other club has been involved in conversation to the extent that Liverpool have. Yet given their unwillingness to spend money on the likes of Timo Werner already, not to the mention the fact that Jurgen Klopp has states a hundred times that his side will not spend big on new arrivals, the case remains on open one.
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– Liverpool won their first league title in 30 years.
– Leeds United were promoted to the Premier League for the first time in 16 years.
– Real Madrid won La Liga for the first time in three years.
– Football stopped due to the COVID-19 pandemic for the first time, well, ever.
We at the DEPR headquarters rank the 25 (yes, 25) best teams in Europe for the 30th and final time this season. And to do so we thought we’d bring out the big guns; the guns that, after firing, you look at and say ‘madonn’.
Yep, that’s right, it’s The Sopranos week.
“‘Remember when’ is the lowest form of conversation.”
For years, all Leeds United fans could bring themselves to talk about was ever fading memories of their Don Revie-led glory days. When their team were the best in England, winning league titles and FA Cups by the truckload.
Now, finally, they have something else to talk about.
For the first time in 16 years, their club are back where they belong in England’s top flight. And we at DEPR are bloody glad they are.
“In your worst dreams a duck flies off with your penis.”
In Sevilla fans’ worst dreams, Barcelona or Real Madrid fly off with Lucas Ocampos this summer.
They’ll be hoping that their qualification for the Champions League will be enough to keep hold of the talented Argentine.
“Life is putting the prozac to the test.”
The first half of the Bundesliga season was remarkable for Borussia Monchengladbach. They were locked in a three-horse race for the league title, and were absolutely blowing away every team that dared face them with their ferocious counter-attacking football.
The second half of the season was a different story. It, well…let’s just say it put the prozac to the test for Gladbach fans. BUT, while their title challenge fell apart, they did manage to sneak into the Champions League.
“In my thoughts, I use the technique of positive visualisation.”
Ok Leicester City fans, we know that the last day of the season didn’t exactly go to plan, but let’s look at the positives:
– Your club massively overachieved this season. – Jamie Vardy won the Golden Boot. – James Maddison is signing a new contract. – Big Brendy Baps has your team playing great football. – Your new kit is lovely.
Feel better?
“If I had any ounce of self-respect I would cut your d**k off.”
If RB Leipzig have any ounce of self-respect then they wouldn’t have tweeted about Timo Werner signing for Chelsea like a Twitter fan account called @MaestroMount8.
Embarrassing.
“Teddy Roosevelt once gave an entire speech with a bullet lodged in his chest. Some things are just a matter of duty.”
Stefano Pioli once resurrected an entire football club with a bullet lodged in his chest – a wound he’s miraculously survived.
So despite Milan all but appointing Ralf Rangnick as their manager for next season, Pioli – due to a certain 10 game unbeaten run and wins over Juventus and Lazio – will be in charge at San Siro for the 2020/21 campaign.
And he bloody deserves to be.
“Like Popeye says, I yam what I yam.”
Love them or hate them, Atletico Madrid are still just who they are:
A boring, yet effective, football team.
“Other people’s definitions of you, sometimes they’re more about making themselves feel better. You gotta define yourself.”
At the start of the 2019/20 season, every single member of the 90min editorial team tried to define Sheffield United as relegation fodder.
During the 2019/20 season, the Blades proved themselves to be a lot more than that. They defined themselves as a top half team who play arguably the most exciting football in the Premier League.
Nice one.
“Well, what are you gonna do?”
Well, Borussia Dortmund…what are you gonna do this summer?
Are you going to keep hold of Jadon Sancho?
Are you going to sign a defender who can actually, you know, DEFEND?
Are you going to sign more central midfield cover?
Or are you going to accept the fact that you’re only the second best team in Germany? Huh?
It’s time to show some ambition BVB. Do the right thing.
“I’m like King Midas in reverse here. Everything I touch turns to sh*t.”
In 2017, Ousmane Dembele was one of the most exciting prospects in the world. Now, he’s a bit sh*t.
In 2018, Philippe Coutinho was one of the most talented attacking players in Europe. Now, he’s a bit sh*t.
In 2018, Antoine Griezmann was one of the best footballers in the world. Now, he’s a bit sh*t.
All of the above is proof that everything Barcelona touches turns to sh*t.
“Even a broken clock is right twice a day.”
Let’s call a spade a spade, Gennaro Gattuso isn’t a particularly great manager and Napoli haven’t been particularly great since he’s taken charge.
However, every once a while, he’s able to inspire Napoli to a huge win.
The Coppa Italia final was one such win. So, you know, credit where it’s due.
“More is lost by indecision than by wrong decision.”
Manchester City underperformed this season for one simple reason: they didn’t buy a centre back last summer.
Instead of buying a centre back they trusted John Stones, who proved once again that he is completely and utterly hopeless.
“When you’re married, you’ll understand the importance of fresh produce.”
Another summer of buying a billion players and selling a trillion players led to yet another Eredivisie title for Ajax.
“You steer the ship the best way you know. Sometimes it’s smooth. Sometimes you hit the rocks. In the meantime, you find your pleasures where you can.”
Inter’s 2019/20 campaign has been a pretty interesting one.
Sometimes it’s been smooth, when Romelu Lukaku and Lautaro Martinez were firing on all cylinders and I Nerazzurri were challenging for the title.
Sometimes they hit the rocks, with defeats to Bologna.
Overall though, there’s been plenty to enjoy for Inter fans this season, and under Antonio Conte their club are certainly moving in the right direction.
“Some people are so far behind in a race that they actually believe they’re leading.”
Chelsea think that they’re absolutely smashing the transfer window so far with the signings of Timo Werner and Hakim Ziyech.
Yeah…they’re not.
Neither of those players are defenders, and that’s what the Blues are in dire need of.
“Positive vibes only.”
Had COVID not put a halt to the Serie A season, SS Lazio would probably be celebrating their first Scudetto in 20 years.
And that’s a pretty depressing though to Le Aquile fans so let’s not dwell on it. Instead, let’s dwell on the fact that your club have been absolutely outstanding this season and will probably be even better in the next.
Nine SPFL titles in a row and showing no signs of slowing down anytime soon.
You Bhoys…you Bhoys…I’ll tell ya…it’s beautiful stuff.
“Sometimes we’re all hypocrites.”
About eight months ago football fans took to Twitter and declared Manchester United ‘the worst team in the world’, ‘an embarrassment’ and ‘a team full of sh*tters’.
Now, football fans take to Twitter and declare Manchester United ‘the best team in the world’, ‘an amazing side’ and ‘a team full of heroes’.
Twitter is a fickle place, but at least football fans are now slightly closer to being right than they were eight months ago.
“There’s an old Italian saying: you f**k up once, you lose two teeth.”
There’s an old saying in Porto: you f**k up once, Benfica win the Primeira Liga.
So judging by the fact that Porto won the league, it’s fair to say that they didn’t put a foot wrong all season.
“You know, Tony, it’s a multiple choice thing with you. ‘Cause I can’t tell if you’re old-fashioned, you’re paranoid, or just a f**king asshole.”
It’s a multiple choice thing with Juventus.
‘Cause after they bagged their ninth consecutive Scudetto I can’t tell if they’re a great team, a boringly effective team, or just f**king sh*t.
“This ain’t negotiation time. This is Scarface, final scene, f**kin’ bazookas under each arm, ‘say hello to my little friend!'”
This summer isn’t a summer in which PSG can afford Neymar and Kylian Mbappé to force a move away from the club.
This ain’t negotiation time.
It’s UEFA Champions League mini-tournament time, when Neymar and Mbappé need to step up and deliver on the grandest stage for their current club.
This is Scarface, final scene, f**kin’ bazookas under each arm, ‘say hello to my little friend!‘ time for PSG’s two superstars.
“Someday soon, you’re gonna have families of your own and if you’re lucky, you’ll remember the little moments like this, that were good.”
For…well…ever, Atalanta have been starved of success. Seen as nothing more than a provincial club who could never, ever, hope to compete with the two European heavyweights (AC Milan and Inter) from down the road.
And then Gian Piero Gasperini took over, and things changed.
The little Bergamo club are now better than both their mega-rich neighbours – despite their Championship-sized budget – and pretty much every other team in Europe too.
“You’re only as good as your last envelope.”
There’s a strong argument to be made for Liverpool being top of the end of season Definitive European Power Rankings.
They won their first league title in three decades.
They won the FIFA Club World Cup.
They’re the current holders of the UEFA Champions League.
BUT they did choose to lift the Premier League trophy to Coldplay’s ‘Sky Full of Stars’ so for that reason – and that reason alone – they’re down in third.
“Be a leader, not a follower. Master P said that.”
Is Zinedine Zidane the best manager in the world?
The two La Liga titles, three UEFA Champions Leagues and two Club World Cups in just four years as a head coach suggest that he is.
“Just when they thought I was out, they pulled me back.”
After a fairly disastrous end to 2019, Bayern Munich made a new year’s resolution to be the best damn football team in Europe and they actually stuck to it.
Since the turn of the year, Die Roten have won 23 of 24 games, lifted the Bundesliga Meisterschale and the DFB-Pokal, and scored about a million goals (most of which were scored by Robert Lewandowski).
And it’s this form that has led to Bayern Munich being crowned the number one team in Europe by 90min’s Definitive European Power Rankings.
The 2020 summer transfer window is finally open – and 90min have you covered here with the latest in what will be a frantic ten week spell for every top club in Europe.
You’ll find the latest breaking news from across Europe, including confirmed deals and all the rumours you need to keep an eye on before the window slams shut.
The transfer window is set to close across the board on October 5.
We’re only in day one of the transfer window and Norwich are already having to fend off major interest in right-back Max Aarons.
Sky in Germany state that Bayern Munich have made contact with the Canaries over a deal for the Englishman, and it is thought that Norwich are looking for €20m to part ways with Aarons.
Today’s biggest story so far is the news that Borussia Dortmund have snubbed Manchester United’s first bid in their formal negotiations for Jadon Sancho.
United proposed to pay €98m, but Dortmund are sticking to their €120m asking price.
Check out the full story here.
Jan Vertonghen and Michel Vorm have both departed the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium today, but there may just be something to get excited about in the new future.
Japhet Tanganga has signed a new deal with the club until 2025.
Liverpool have confirmed that centre-back Dejan Lovren has completed his expected move to Zenit Saint Petersburg.
The Croatia international managed 185 appearances in all competitions during his six years at Anfield, helping Liverpool to both Champions League and Premier League glory.
A big day for Chelsea fans. The Blues have now opened formal negotiations with Bayer Leverkusen over Kai Havertz.
That’s according to transfer guru Fabrizio Romano, who states that Chelsea are looking to pay around €80m for the German.
Chelsea winger Willian’s time at the club looked to be coming to an end, but Sky Sports News now state that there has been a breakthrough in talks and the Blues are now the favourites to keep Willian.
The Brazil international was pushing for a three-year deal but Chelsea had only offered two, but it appears as though there may have been a compromise.
Liverpool’s interest in Schalke centre-back Ozan Kabak is genuine, according to Christian Falk.
The 20-year-old has been touted as a replacement for Dejan Lovren, who is expected to join Zenit Saint Petersburg.
Jan Vertonghen has confirmed that he has played his final game for Tottenham Hotspur.
The 33-year-old, who was an unused substitute in Sunday’s 1-1 draw with Crystal Palace, said it was a ‘sad day’ to be leaving the club.
Midfielder Adam Lallana is set to undergo a medical with Brighton and Hove Albion ahead of joining the club, according to The Telegraph.
A three-year deal is on the table for Lallana if all goes well.
Bayern Munich loanee Ivan Perisic has again been linked with Manchester United, with a story stating a swap deal involving Alexis Sanchez could be on the cards.
Perisic has spent the 2019/20 season on loan with Bundesliga champions Bayern Munich – who have the option to make that deal a permanent one – while Sanchez was sent to Inter – Perisic’s parent club – by Manchester United.
It is now reported by Fichajes – who site ‘Transfer News’ as their source – that Inter and United have held discussions about a potential swap deal.
However, when you pick apart the bones of the story, there’s really not much to it. Firstly, he does not match the profile of player Ole Gunnar Solskjaer has targeted in recent years. Younger players have been drafted in with an obvious eye on the future.
Aaron Wan-Bissaka and Daniel James were signed last summer while Harry Maguire and Bruno Fernandes were brought in for big sums, with the latter pair still having plenty left in the tank. At 31, Perisic does not match either category.
Perisic has long been regarded as a target for United, dating back to Jose Mourinho’s spell in the Old Trafford dugout.
Back in May, Inter’s sporting director Piero Ausilio revealed there was a ‘gentlemen’s agreement’ between Inter and Bayern over Perisic’s future.
He said: “We’ve a gentlemen agreement with Bayern Münich for Ivan Perisic, our relationship with them is so good so we can negotiate about his buy-back clause on next weeks.”
So, for a number of reasons, Perisic moving to United seems unlikely. If you get good odds on that move not happening, take them. Might as well make some money off some regurgitated nonsense, right?
He’s the successor to Sir Alex Ferguson, he was one of the worst Cardiff managers in recent memory, he needs a lifetime contract, Manchester United need to sack him while Mauricio Pochettino is still available…whatever opinion you have on him, there’s now an increasing sense of permanence about Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s reign at Old Trafford.
It looked as if the Norwegian was losing his grip on the wheel, with the Red Devils slipping as far as eighth place at the beginning of February, but since the restart (with a little bit of help from a certain Portuguese arrival), he has steered United to an FA Cup semi-final and within touching distance of Champions League football.
With the prodigal Paul Pogba miraculously returning to a midfield which is beginning to look increasingly settled, you might say that this side at least appears to be unmistakeably Ole’s, and Solskjaer’s useful habit of protecting and nurturing the investments of his club’s hierarchy has led to reports of more (and more significant) planned investment in the first-team this summer, with the jigsaw puzzle of United’s front three missing a conspicuously Jadon Sancho-shaped piece on the right-hand side.
With the red half of Manchester on red alert for any and all tidbits of Sancho news, when a recent dispatch from The Athleticsuggested that Man Utd would be looking at Bayern Munich’s much-decorated French winger Kingsley Coman, the reaction was in some quarters was unsurprisingly one of bemused frustration.
Sancho can be found in third place on the list of Bundesliga top scorers, just behind Timo Werner and Robert Lewandowski. Coman, on the other hand, can be found in 76th, level with former Manchester City centre-back Dedryck Boyata.
To add insult (and injury) to injury, Coman is of course notorious for having been no stranger to the treatment table over the course of his career, and though it was great to see him return to football just two monthsafter horrifically tearing his knee capsule against Spurs in the Champions League, it is undeniably a question mark which lingers over his name.
The other thing that Coman is notorious for? League titles, baby – nine of them in fact.
Yes, I am being slightly disingenuous here – Coman did not exactly do the heavy lifting for any of these, and if I moved from PSG to Juventus to Bayern, as well as having a lot of questions about the transfer policy of those three clubs, I might also have nine titles.
At the same time, history has shown us more than enough times that the side with the best starting XI is not necessarily the team that wins the league.
Pochettino’s 2016/17 Spurs side are a typical example – there was a beautiful balance to their first-team, from the formidable defensive pairing of Toby Alderweireld and Jan Vertonghen, to the flying fullbacks of Danny Rose and Kyle Walker, to the respective grace and aggression of Mousa Dembele and Victor Wanyama. But, because more often than not they could only bring on Vincent Janssen when Harry Kane was tired, or Georges-Kevin Nkoudou when the chips were down, they finished seven points behind the eventual league winners Chelsea.
In this sense, like any other title winning side, PSG, Juve and Bayern were not as dominant as they were because of a formidable, reliable starting lineup alone – they were only as strong as the player they could call upon when legs were getting tired 70 minutes into a challenging away match, or the player who they could turn to when their star forward picked up a freak injury two days before a game.
Coman is that player.
An enormous part of the argument for signing him as a reinforcement is his quality, which has been horrendously undersold in much of the reaction to his prospective signing.
His talent isn’t just noteworthy within the context of the Bayern squad, but also within the context of the Bundesliga. Looking into his numbers shows us that even as a rotation option he has completed the fourth-most dribbles in a Bayern squad stacked with tricksy talent, just one succesful dribble behind Serge Gnabry despite having played nine less games.
By the standards of the league, his dribbling ability is up there with anyone’s, including a certain Englishman abroad – every 90 minutes, Coman is dribbling past a stunning 3.89 players (not literally of course), which is just 0.05 of a footballer away from Sancho’s own per 90 average of 3.94.
If the margins separating Coman and Sancho’s dribbling are infinitesimal, the gulf in trickery between the Frenchman and Man Utd’s own backup wingers is astronomical – the young Mason Greenwood can be forgiven for his own figure of 1.45 defenders dribbled past every 90 minutes, but Daniel James’ own paltry 1.18 players beaten per 90 shows that Coman can offer penetrative dribbling far, far beyond the access of United’s other reinforcements.
In creativity, too, Coman far exceeds Greenwood and James, with his 1.98 key passes / 90 in a different galaxy to Greenwood’s 0.87 and James’ 0.59. If Coman fated to be a sub, he is that most luxurious of subs, and it’s preposterous to argue that he wouldn’t improve the current outlook for United.
Moving away from the stats, the naked eye can tell you something more important – that Coman as a squad option would fit seamlessly into United’s current style.
Just like Martial and Rashford, Coman has frightening reserves of speed on the break, is intelligent with the smaller touches and passes he plays around the edge of the box, and has the smarts to beat even the most studied of offside traps- he even possesses some of the, ahem, ‘cleverness’ that we’ve associated United’s recent good fortune with penalties.
You won’t find a backup option more tailored to the high-octane demands of the Ole era anywhere, and the best bit is, he can play on either wing!
And yet, Coman’s practicality for this United squad is dependent on multiple caveats, as with any deal.
The first of these is injury, and for this reason United would have to proceed cautiously when it came to price, with rumours of an initial loan deal sounding sensible.
But ultimately, to win the title, you do still have to have a pretty damn good first team, and Coman, while gifted, would not have anywhere near the impact of Sancho as a starter at Old Trafford. Arriving as some kind of consolation prize after negotiations fail for the former Manchester City starlet would place undue pressure on Coman, and expectations which he would be unlikely to rise to.
But as the man who a panting left-back nervously watches warm up after a 65 minute grilling by Sancho? There could be nobody better than Coman.