Edit: Shanghai Shenhua had a crazy owner. He transferred Drogba and Anelka but failed to pay them regularly and on time. That is probably the reason they escaped the first moment they could get out. I guess owners have learned from this, and the conglomerates that own those ballclubs are not stupid.
Sky Italia saying Mourinho is close to signing with ManU, will take over in July. Would be pretty funny to have Mou and Pep in Manchester, both guys hate each other and it would also make Manchester the city of douche coaches. Next: During Neymar's trial, his father revealed that ManU made a 190mil offer last summer, pretty crazy to see how desperate ManU is nowadays (they apparently made quite a lot 100mil+ offers for certain players). Third: Pep apparently made the decision to leave Bayern during the first three months of 2015 and wasn't even willing to negotiate with Bayern. Really nice person, especially when you consider all his lies in front of journalists regarding this. So glad when he's gone.
Extremely unlikely, we don't need to sell anyone. Only question mark is behind Alaba, as he's stubborn and wants to play as a midfielder mainly, which Bayern probably won't be willing to do. Pep used him a lot there, so maybe he'll try to lure Alaba by granting him the wish to play as a midfielder. Mix of everything honestly. I didn't see any real strategy from the lowest to highest teams/age groups or with the coaching staff. Sammer, Reschke and Hoeneß are working on improving that atm, I already talked about the new academy and stratetgy we're trying to implement. We were a bit too focused on local talent and German youngsters, that narrows the talent pool down a bit. I'd think we'll try to aim for international top prospects in the future, but my next point explains why it's difficult: The big issue is the gap between our 2nd and 1st team. As a youngster, you know you probably won't play any real minutes for Bayern in the near future. So that only leaves going to our 2nd team in the 4th division, which is unattractive and not where any talented player would want to go. That makes it extremely difficult to convince top prospects of joining Bayern. Clubs like Schalke have one of the best youth systems in Europe, the divisions are working very closely together and as a prospect you'll always have a good chance of playing for their 1st team rather sooner than later. Same with clubs like Stuttgart and many midtable teams, the chance of becoming a 1st team player is much higher than with Bayern. So as a prospect, the choice between Bayern and other clubs is often pretty logical, only the most confident guys join Bayern and think they have what it takes. A few years ago, we were in relegation for division 3 and lead 2:0 in the 92nd minute, which would've made us relegation winners (first leg was 0:1, so we had a combined 2:1 lead). But then our goalkeeper at the time, Lukas Raeder mad, committed the error of the century and cost us the game. I have the video here, watch from 1:30min on: <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Sq6GYdqztH0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> After that game, half of the team and nearly every promising youngster left the club. The sad thing is how some youngsters declined to play in the relegation and instead went on vacation (Weiser), a guy like Pizarro (the Bundesliga legend) even offered to play in the two matches, but the coach opted to not do it, huge mistake. This season, we're 6th in the division and it has been looking quite hopeless in the past years, that one Raeder mistake took the youth system back a few years and it's now extremely difficult to reach 3rd division. So right now, we can only hope that the new academy will be a huge success and that we'll be able to draw good talents to our club. Luring some international top prospects somehow and aiming for 3rd division in the next years is very important. I think we'll also go for a loan model like Chelsea and other clubs do very often, where we sign the biggest prospects and loan them to mditable teams around Europe for a few years.
Lukas Raeder is a total ass. Saw the interview with him after the match, and it sure seemed like he did it on purpose.
The interview seemed a bit weird, but afterwards he really seemed down. Think he was just trying to act tough in that interview. <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YW2BY8uFzWQ" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Just came to post this, sick to see the likes of Liverpool lose a player signing to a Chinese club. Shanghai apparently made a 91.5mil offer for Hulk this winter, but Hulk's club didn't take the offer (dem billionaire clubs). China really is going all-in on soccer, seems like they'll have half of Brazil's finest players soon. Regarding Mourinho: Apparently signed a deal with ManU now, just waiting for the official announcement.
New Teixeira club Jiangsu also tried to sign Oscar for 75mil bpd, this week is truly full of "China going nuts" news.
Not defending Neville, who is an idiot but he did not say that. That quote was made up by someone on twitter.
Thx breh, very helpful explanation. Hopefully under Ancelotti, more Bayern youth will get a chance (if they show they deserve it) over the next few years and the academy will also begin to prosper.
Ancelotti doesn't have anything to do with it (certainly Guardiola never gave a crap). The demise of Bayern's second team began when "Tiger" Gerland was moved to the first team (which was necessary, though). Also, they put certain former players in charge of youth affairs who weren't really qualified but just got the job because of former merits. They still haven't gotten out of that hole.
True, but now it will be difficult to find a quality coach willing to take on a job in 4th division and with such bad promotion chances for Division 3. I think we either have to A: wait many years until the new Academy produces talent or B: play one season with all talent we can get plus experienced/old season 2 vets or something. Being promoted to Div 3 would be so crucial and open up a lot of chances for rebuilding.
