Towards the end of the January transfer window, the loan deal of João Cancelo from Manchester City to Bayern Munich took many by surprise.
While the Portuguese defender hadn’t been playing as much under Pep Guardiola of late, he was still seen as a key part of the Spaniard’s plans, but that certainly wasn’t how the player saw it.
That’s why this move to leave Manchester City and head to Bavaria was put together, and the defender will finish the season at the Bundesliga club, who do have the option to buy him for an elevated fee.
Whether they do decide to trigger it remains to be seen, but Hasan Salihamidzic has confirmed one thing on Wednesday when speaking to Sport Bild’s Christian Falk, and that is they didn’t spend money to get him in the first place.
The journalist took to Twitter to explains that ‘the transfer of João Cancelo is a free loan’, before quoting the Bayern Munich sporting CEO, who said: “The fact that Cancelo worked without a fee is due to the network.”
What that network is per se isn’t explained, but we can only guess that with Guardiola’s past at Bayern, the player’s desire to leave Manchester City and the potential fee that could be received from a permanent transfer, all parties decided it was best to just do it this way.
TRUE✅ Hasan Salihamidzic confirmed that the Transfer of João Cancelo is a free loan: „The fact that Cancelo worked without a fee is due to the network“
— Christian Falk (@cfbayern) February 8, 2023
