Bayern Munich were willing to pay a €250m package to secure Erling Haaland’s signature last summer before his eventual move to Manchester City.
That’s according to Kicker, who explain that the Bundesliga giants ‘made an intensive bid’ to secure the Norwegian’s signature but ultimate ‘lost out’ to their Premier League counterparts.
They explain that Bayern would have paid a quarter of a billion euros for the striker as he planned to leave Borussia Dortmund last summer.
The fact he was leaving Dortmund was ‘an open secret’ and no top side in Europe would have said no to him at that point in time. It was, however, Bayern and Manchester City who had the ‘best cards’ in the race for his signature.
According to Kicker’s information, 13 months ago those in charge at the Allianz Arena ‘would have been prepared’ to go beyond the financial framework in place at the club and pay Haaland an annual salary of around €35m.
That’s an ‘astronomically high sum’ in world football and even more so for the Bundesliga, which is among the more conservative leagues.
On top of that salary would have been a €75m transfer figure for Dortmund, meaning combined with the five-year deal they wanted Haaland to sign, Bayern would have been paying €250m for the striker.
They never followed through with that interest because at that point Robert Lewandowski had not made it clear he wanted to move on from the club.
However, the public interest in Haaland did cause him to become disgruntled, particularly as they were trying so hard and willing to pay such huge fees for him.
That eventually ended in him moving to Barcelona while Manchester City made their move and ‘prevailed’ in the hunt by making an ‘even higher offer’ than the one Bayern were willing to make.
