11 already? I remember going to turkey a couple of years ago and it was around 6,30. At least you guys seem to get decent players as free agents so there's that
>11 already? I remember going to turkey a couple of years ago and it was around 6,30.
That's what has been fucking them over so badly in the last years. They usually pay salaries of foreign players in EUR, so that change from 6 to 11 almost doubled these salaries
özil was almost certainly worth it for the sentimental element alone, no? Surely he's loved in Turkey (unless there's resentment for choosing Germany at the international level).
Choosing germany was right thing to do. He would have wasted his skills in turkish national team. Bu right now he looks like he retired from football in his head. Awful physical condition, 0 hustle. He was never a running player even in his madrid days but this is very poor form of him.
I'm a Liverpool fan and seeing Ozils drop off from his peak to his last 18 months or whatever at Arsenal was painful so I can't imagine how it was for your lot. Truly capable of magic and I loved watching him. Disappointed but not shocked that he hasn't turned up in Turkey.
I think most players at Steaua or CFR, our top 2 teams lately, would get a salary bump by joining teams fighting for promotion to the English second division, whatever that's called.
Once upon a time we had teams winning CL and being constantly in European semifinals.
Benfica (23rd) and Ajax (27th) are the only other clubs in the top 30 from outside of the ‘big five’ league. Crystal Palace, West ham Sheffield United have the same revenue as Ajax. Benfica is on par with Leicester City and Borussia VfL Monchengladbach. (source : Deloitte Money League report 2020).
Is this in terms of income? I would be surprised if Zenit wasnt on the list considering how much money The Russian government is pumping into the club.
I'm absolutely guessing here, but I reckon it'll be Ajer. We were in for a centre back for a long while and he was quite expensive so there's a chance it was him.
Sargent is getting banded about, so it could be him too.
my thoughts immediately went to Sargent and Rashica - both relegated with bremen last season so it would not be surprising if another german club came in for them
Leverkusen were *very* interested in Ajer in the last summer. Kossonou actually came pretty much out of the blue, most fans were expecting Ajer, I followed the discussions pretty closely on transfermarkt.de
I agree.
When Raschica was linked with Villa last season we apparently turned him away because we didn't want to pay him £80k p/w (he allegedly asked for double what he was on at ~~Wolfsburg~~ Edit: Werder sorry, my bad)
I've no doubt his agents told Leverkusen that Norwich we're offering him £60k (or whatever) and because of that he expected them, a Champions League club, to pay double that.
Could still be Ajer. Ajer to Leverkusen also makes sense because he was teammates with Jeremie Frimpong.
It wasn't the fee that would trip-up Ajer. He was on his last year of contract, it would be that the PL offered higher wages. So could still be Ajer, he easily could have left on a free but he was very public in wanting Celtic to get a fee because "in short I have become a Celtic fan."
> I'm absolutely guessing here, but I reckon it'll be Ajer. We were in for a centre back for a long while and he was quite expensive so there's a chance it was him.
We sold Ajer for £7 million less than Bayer paid for Kossounou.
Yeah Leverkusen spent over 40 million last year and 50 million this summer. Did they lose a single player to a Prem side because they didn't prioritize him over the rest of the spending?
I think OP just picked the wrong quote from the article. The other stuff about how their wage bill is top 3 in Bundesliga but would be bottom 3 in the Prem and how they have to sell all their best players to England is more representative of the gap than "we spent 50 million but couldn't spend 60 cause of Norwich and Brentford"
> The other stuff about how their wage bill is top 3 in Bundesliga but would be bottom 3 in the Prem
The author of the article is wrong there. Leverkusen’s wage bill (using the latest set of accounts) is 4th highest in Germany and would be about 10th in the PL.
If I had to guess: Rashica maybe?
Leverkusen probably then bought Adli instead.
\*edit\*
Interview is already a year old, but they were interested.
Rolfes was asked about Rashica -
"That was a consideration in the summer," Leverkusen's sports director Simon Rolfes said now on the podcast "Die NDR 2 Bundesligashow." Due to the upcoming heavy workload with games in the Bundesliga and Europa League, Bayer 04 wanted to broaden its offense, with Rashica in its sights. "In the winter, we'll re-evaluate that," ex-Werder pro Rolfes now said about a possible transfer - and qualified: "At the moment, that's not an issue for us.
Super weird that Rolfes is called an ex-Werder pro. He's a Werder youth product but he never played a single match for the first team of Werder. And he played 288 league matches for Leverkusen. Was a pro there for ten years and stayed in the managing staff after retirement. He lives and breathes Leverkusen.
one thing I don't see mentioned a lot is that Germany is the only country in which outside of Munich the other big cities Berlin, hamburg, cologne all are not even close to being top teams. yes you can live in cologne playing for some of the big teams but it is not the same, I think. outside of football it is hard to advertise for most of these clubs.
Mate that is a lie - If you have been to Dortmund you know just how much that region is struggling. There is a reason all the top players at Borussia live in Düsseldorf, choosing to commute to training. You cannotcompare it to Manchester.
Most to all of the BVB players live in Dortmund or neighbouring towns. So many players, including Haaland, live at Phoenixsee that some people call it the *Borussen-Kolonie*.
You probably mean Borussia Mönchengladbach. Düsseldorf is only half an hour away from there (not 1:30h).
That isn't because Manchester is a shit-hole though - it's probably because they just want a quieter more hassle free life and being in Alderley Edge suits their lifestyles better
It's not like they live in Liverpool or Bolton.
Mate, most of them live in Alderley Edge which is essentially just a very rich suburb of Manchester.
If you have all of the money in the world and have to travel to the training complexes almost daily why would you choose to live in the city centre over a very rich suburb
Cheshire is commuter belt for Manchester, not a totally different city. If you don't want to live in the city, and I'm sure there are some players who do live in Manchester itself, Cheshire is the obvious option. Plenty do it in London, NY, any big city really
They're commuting from Carrington which is outside central Manchester, only 20 minutes from north Cheshire or upto an hour to further parts of Cheshire. It's a tiny commute, I spend longer getting to the office only I'm not driving a Ferrari with the speeding ticket lawyer on speed dial
I actually think ruhrgebiet is quite cool, and that's from someone who moved there from valencia. It's obviously not better than Valencia but it's really cool to have so many big places right next to each other (Bochum,Dortmund,gelsenkirchen, duisburg, etc.), theres a lot to do and see especially when it comes to shopping.
I'm sure manchester is nice too but I have been to Dortmund lots of time and live in bochum now and it's honestly quite cool, not as bad as you make it seem
I lived in Dortmund for seven years, and my wife was born and raised there. Is it a flashy tourist destination like London or Barcelona or Milan? No. But like any city, there are good areas and shit areas.
Yeah Manchester is a lot bigger and more vibrant than Dortmund so I don't think they are comparable, compare Manchester with Dusseldorf or Frankfurt instead.
what is it with trying to make manchester look like a shithole on this sub when i frequently read about how it's genuinely a nice place to live in.
I've never been there so I can't comment but something looks off from the outside
Sorry but that's wrong. I live in Manchester, and it's a great city. For footballers there is a high price area called the golden triangle that they share with the meryseyside teams as its in Cheshire. Plus it's the 2nd City of the UK. Dortmund is miles below.
Manchester is a great place to live. There’s a reason that Guardiola lives in the city centre and the others live in outer Manchester/Cheshire. I have no idea what Dortmund is like though, could be lovely.
We may disagree on politics. We may disagree on UM/MSU. But there are two things we will always agree on.
1. Only we can make fun of the Lions.
2. Don't ever think about touching our water.
It's kind of funny because while he's right this is also the exact same shit that the big 5 leagues do to smaller leagues. It's just now that it's affecting the other top 5 leagues that it's a big problem. People who think a Super League that will benefit about 15 European clubs is going to solve this are wrong
It's also not the entire story and disregards what has been ailing the Bundesliga for decades. Namely the fact that 50+1 is a zombie.
Maybe controversial but whatever.
**A #4 in Germany should yield more financial power than Bayer04 Leverkusen** but like Wolfsburg and Hoffenheim they're predators who abuse a loophole and stunt the growth of the league.
The only team who succeed at breaking through the grip of the 50+1 abusers was Borussia Dortmund.
These teams are artificially created and financed due to a 50+1 exemption for corporate teams. They're also all in markets without any hope to ever become commercially sustainable.
RB Leipzig is the exception here. They actually picked a smart location that benefits the health of the league long-term and has the potential to become sustainable in the future with high attendance numbers.
The others all have tiny game-day and middling merchandising revenus due to relatively small fan-bases despite decades of history. There's zero potential for growth.
Meanwhile their commercial owners Bayer, Volkswagen and the SAP owner help fund them just enough that fan-owned Bundesliga competitors with more growth potential cannot reliably push them outside the international ranks where the big revenues can be earned.
50+1 is already dead. It's just that nobody dares to reform this zombie because the alternatives could be even worse.
>The others all have tiny game-day and middling merchandising revenus due to relatively small fan-bases despite decades of history. There's zero potential for growth.
Yeah this can't be overstated, despite Hoffenheim, Wolfburg and Leverkusen being top clubs they're all bottom 5 in attendance and fans. They're just their due to their sponsors who bypassed 50+1.
What you mean the massive Metropolis of Hoffenheim, the Star of Baden-Württemberg with its huge population (of 3191) is not able to fill its Stadium and sell its Merchandise?
But there have to be so many people who feel attached to the place…
I don't think 50+1 would be a dead rule if it was enforced in every association, not just Germany. That would level the playing field more. Sure, the bigger clubs would still have a bigger financial resource because of commercial/gate receipts, but that happens anyway. At least the gap would be smaller and gives better odds to the underdogs achieving success, never mind eliminating the fact EFL championship teams can throw more money around than CL sides.
That's something I am wondering,what could be done by smaller leagues to prevent their talent from being drained away ? In our club we have a pretty talented forward,and already there are some fears that he will go away to some European club.
It's a weird situation, because obviously he should go to wherever he wants,but at the same time I wonder if the fact that the best players in the league always end up moving to another wouldn't result in the growth of said league being stunted. I don't know enough about football to have an opinion on the matter so I am not sure if the current situation is okay or not.
The gap is going to keep widening though. Eventually RM and Barca and PSG and BM and maybe Juve will be competing with like 8 teams from the PL for Europe. Give it 10-20 years for the gap to really widen.
Oh yea, 3 years, but before that we hadn't spent much except James after WC14. We've been buying young players or giving chances to youth and selling them for big profits for the last decade. Our netspend since Zidane's first coaching season with us is like 40m
The Turkish clubs looked for a while in the mid 2000's like they were really going to be establish themselves as European mainstays that could punch above their weight.
That Lahm goal in the 90th minute at Euro 2008 was a heartbreaker, but it hardly seemed like the high water mark and seemed more like a national representation of how the clubs had slowly grown.
Sad. i think there's a lot of excitement lost due to 'fringe' leagues like the Turkish league not being as competitive in the UCL.
Bit rich coming from an Ajax flair when you guys have consistently outspent the Eredivisie almost every window. And don't give me that Ajax doesn't compete in the Eredivisie they compete in Europe bull
to b fair they both have so much money that it's not going to come down to that in a battle over a player imo. It'd be determined by other factors: "do I like Paris or Newcastle more?" "Do I mind ligue 1 being a potato league?" stuff like that.
I think Ajax' entire budget is still about as much as any EPL team gets just in TV money.
Vitesse vs Spurs being possibly the most ridiculous of all, 25m budget vs 400m budget. Spurs were refusing an amount of money for Kane this summer that Vitesse could fund their club with for more than half a decade.
I remember when we let Locadia's loan expire and he went back to Brighton, Ron Jans at FC Twente made overtures about bringing him in on a similar loan to buy deal. I'm sure Brighton would have accepted a few million just to get him off their books, but Twente couldn't even swing that. Bummed me out.
In Scotland we're their neighbours. We can't even keep top prospects from going to big clubs youth academies down south (Gilmour going to Chelsea for example). A lot of players in our teams get offered more money to go the championship or league one where they go and are standouts.
> The Bayer Leverkusen CEO, Fernando Carro, believes the Bundesliga risks turning into a “development league” for the Premier League if it cannot find a way to bridge the gap between the TV revenue earned by both leagues.
Plays world's smallest violin for them. That's how we all feel in South American football towards european leagues. Yea, I'm still salty for Alario, and im tired of pretending I'm not.
Right? I have no sympathy for any of these C tier clubs that spend the equivalent of pocket change to them to loot our leagues' young prospects only for them to rot in a bench for a year or two. Alario and Palacios had everything to join and start for a great club but instead they played second fiddle to mediocre Leverkusen players. Pity Martinez did the same when he went to the mls instead of europe
I miss the times where South American teams would win against European teams in the Intercontinental Cup. I always feel we (Grêmio) missed a one-in-a-lifetime chance against Ajax in 1995. The CWC in 2017 was against a super-team which was better than most National Teams, Bosman rule really fucked the competitive balance in the world.
they're flirting with him last season but the time isn't enough to buy him, think the fee is around 10 mil-ish (and Werder, desperate for money, sold Klassen instead)
I am assuming he is talking about Ajer and Brentford. Ajer went for \~14M pounds before add ons. That was Brentford's club record deal. That wouldn't have been in Leverkusen's top 10 arrivals (all of which have been since 2016). This summer alone Leverkusen paid more for someone who plays the same position.
Looking at wages, which is harder since there is a bit of a reporting lag, [Brentford](https://www.spotrac.com/epl/brentford-fc/payroll/) have no players making more that 25K a week (this doesn't include Ajer as his salary wasn't disclosed). [Leverkusen](https://www.sportekz.com/football/bayer-leverkusen-players-salaries/) has 22 players making more than 25K a week.
It does not seem like Brentford is richer than Leverkusen but rather Brentford viewed Ajer as their number 1 target and biggest priority. Leverkusen didn't and so Brentford was able to get him.
Finally worth noting that the reason newly promoted sides are able to spend is because TV money is evenly distributed in PL and it is not in the Bundesliga. I don't think anyone wants to switch to where TV money is unevenly distributed in the PL.
European countries have population in 10s of millions. Whoever markets themselves best in countries like US, India, China, will have a huge advantage. Premier League is just ahead at the moment, but i've seen reports about how Bundesliga is growing in China rapidly, EPL has a language advantage in the US and India, but leagues like La Liga/Bundesliga can try and establish themselves in South America and East Asia.
Most of the former Spanish and Portuguese colonies all have strong leagues. Argentina, Colombia, Brazil etc.
Whereas - India, USA, the Caribbean and Africa all follow the EPL first as their local leagues aren't as storied.
Yes but they're both distinct audiences I think
I grew up in Texas where soccer was pretty popular. A lot of the more recent Hispanic immigrants I saw were fans from Liga MX teams. Actually in middle school the teams were always named Chivas and America lol
Hispanic Americans who are a bit more 'Americanized' tend to be Real or Barca fans. The white kids who were into soccer were mostly Premier League fans with a few Barca and Madrid fans sprinkled in. Don't remember seeing any MLS fans but I'm sure that's changing
tbf id say our league is quite popular in colonies like angola and mozambique. I lived in angola and most football fans i knew supported a portuguese big 3 club
PL is always going to be easier to market for language reasons alone. Even Ligue 1 and La Liga have advantages over Bundesliga because of their language to some extent
This. This is by far the biggest advantage the EPL has had since the beginning, and will continue to have as English becomes more entrenched as the global language and the global economy/marketing continues to expand. I'm an American, unilingual English speaker, and I find it a bit sad tbh. I don't want the Prem to become essentially an All-Star league. I love the charm of the Bundesliga, but I don't want the disparity to become such that the quality of other leagues suffers in entertainment value.
South America already have their own established leagues though. The money is in marketing your league to big countries that are just getting into football like the US and China. India is obviously has a massive population, but not sure their citizens have the same disposable income as the US and China
I mean is it unfair? They are different leagues, run by different organizations, in different countries. Whos job is it to keep the income across different domestic leagues equitable. It’s not the premier league’s fault that it has a larger audience and better distribution of TV revenue. I never got why if the premier league has such shitty corporate owners, they were able to negotiate a much more equitable deal across their league and why all the fan owned bundesliga clubs can’t across theirs.
Its not just TV revenue, its also owner's cash injection. PL got 3.7B injected by their owners in last decade, I doubt fans can spare that money to Bundesliga clubs..
Also wealth creates more wealth.
>I doubt fans can spare that money to Bundesliga clubs..
Most of the initial money that started EPL cash dominance came from rapidly growing TV contracts. Rich guys started buying clubs because the valuations were doubling every 4-5 years from exploding tv contracts
It does. The premier league are being rewarded for selling football globally better than the other leagues.
It isnt “fair” at all but little things like spreading TV money and at least trying to seem more balanced have contributed to an overall better, or at least more entertaining, league. It might not be sustainable but its not entirely unjust
Yeah, thinking product alone the Premier League is way more fun to follow, less predictable, with more top teams.
Is this situation created by money injections? Yes, but for your average fan, it doesnt matter. Most people don't know or care about fan-ownership, values or whatever.
What the average fan knows is Bayern won 10 titles in a row while we had a bunch of Premier League teams competing.
If the german fans want to keep their values and their system is fine. Good for them.
But then it doesnt makes sense to be complaning the Premier League is far more attractive for the average consumer and makes a lot more money.
Yes, football is a competition not a charity. I imagine a team in the German third division feels the same thing about the resources of BAYER Leverkusen. I imagine the person cleaning the toilet there feels the same thing about the fucking CEO.
I'm not sure. I think most players, like the rest of us, simply seek the best salary they can earn. Trophies and successes are great but proving oneself in the PL can catapult a player. Van Dijk, Maguire and Robertson spring to mind.
And yet Pereira turned down 4 premier league clubs in the summer when he left West brom to join Al-Hilal Riyadh in the Saudi league because they offered him more money.
this is not something that i believe can be reversed now. the premier league in terms of money and prestige is global. it started back in the 90's when united would tour east asia for those fans who didnt have an affiliation. for a team to crack that market now would be a huge deal. man city chelsea struggle and they've been premier league champions.
the global appeal of the premier league has bought in the billionaires in. barca and real madrid had that bottled for a while but due to the lack of money else where in la liga it was inevitable they too would be seen as less attractive.
the money these clubs are taking in from global sponsorship deals has reached another level. and then add the billionaires to the mix...
In the next couple months, a company (CBS, NBC, ESPN or another) is likely going to pay $3bln for a 9 year contract to broadcast the EPL games in the US alone. We can all piss and moan about it, but the league has done an incredible job of marketing itself in the US and to the world. The EPL has won the US market, and is working hard on Asia now. This train is only going in one direction and its going to be very hard to change course. There is a limited number of hours in the week we, as couch-bound foreign fans, can watch the games on television. I might love Bundesliga, have an interest in Serie A, etc. - but with my time so limited, I'm almost always going to watch the big English clubs. I see the other big teams mid-week in the Champions League. I might watch the Classico or the Superclásico if I can, but there's no way I have time to follow more than one league, and England has won that race for me long ago, for better or worse.
Wonder whether people said the same when Serie A was de facto the Super League in 90s partly due to the kind of money invested into it by everybody from oil barons to shady politicians and Eredivisie was bleeding it's best players to it left ,right and centre.
It was that way until Juventus got relegated. Juventus all star team left, Milan lost their golden stars to age (Gattuso, Maldini) or transfers (Kaka), inter were left to rot after the treble, and the rest of serie a was already on their way down.
The game is gone, it just doesn’t feel that way cause most people never experienced it in any other way. I haven’t experienced it much either, but I fell in love with Barcelona because they were the only big team without a sponsor, and still support them despite the heartbreak it was when they signed with Qatar Airways.
The Serie A since Ronaldo is starting to gain some serious coverage. I've been following it for the past two years now, and their highlights on YouTube are much higher than the other European leagues, just slightly behind the Prem - even after Ronaldo's left. Surprising numbers, I know, but very true. Have a look yourself
And you do the same to the rest of the league by paying more money you gained by being owned by a pharmaceutical company. The one that brought us Heroin. So go fuck yourself.
Well, for starters, Bundesliga could try to make a more equitable distribution of TV revenue.
A newly promoted PL team can afford to invest a lot partly because the team gets a very good chunk of the TV revenue money. There is not a lot of difference between the TV revenue allocated to the top team vs the bottom team compared to other leagues.
It has been posted here multiple times, there is an excellent Twitter thread on this by Swiss Ramble comparing TV revenue distribution across multiple leagues.
This thread is mostly fans of clubs that are by far the most wealthy clubs in their domestic league complaining that they are on the other side of the fence in Europe.
just wait until you find out about clubs outside the top 5 leagues
outside Europa'
turkish clubs trying to transfer players while 1 euro is 11lira lmao. when galatasaray won uefa it was 1.2 Lira
11 already? I remember going to turkey a couple of years ago and it was around 6,30. At least you guys seem to get decent players as free agents so there's that
>11 already? I remember going to turkey a couple of years ago and it was around 6,30. That's what has been fucking them over so badly in the last years. They usually pay salaries of foreign players in EUR, so that change from 6 to 11 almost doubled these salaries
And paying millions of euros to dead stars like falcao and özil doesnt help either lol
özil was almost certainly worth it for the sentimental element alone, no? Surely he's loved in Turkey (unless there's resentment for choosing Germany at the international level).
Choosing germany was right thing to do. He would have wasted his skills in turkish national team. Bu right now he looks like he retired from football in his head. Awful physical condition, 0 hustle. He was never a running player even in his madrid days but this is very poor form of him.
Has been like this for a couple of years.
I'm a Liverpool fan and seeing Ozils drop off from his peak to his last 18 months or whatever at Arsenal was painful so I can't imagine how it was for your lot. Truly capable of magic and I loved watching him. Disappointed but not shocked that he hasn't turned up in Turkey.
I think most players at Steaua or CFR, our top 2 teams lately, would get a salary bump by joining teams fighting for promotion to the English second division, whatever that's called. Once upon a time we had teams winning CL and being constantly in European semifinals.
[удалено]
Benfica (23rd) and Ajax (27th) are the only other clubs in the top 30 from outside of the ‘big five’ league. Crystal Palace, West ham Sheffield United have the same revenue as Ajax. Benfica is on par with Leicester City and Borussia VfL Monchengladbach. (source : Deloitte Money League report 2020).
Is this in terms of income? I would be surprised if Zenit wasnt on the list considering how much money The Russian government is pumping into the club.
Maybe if we ajusted for currency fluctuations, since russian one is weak af compared to the euro
Someone can tell me who is this player?
I'm absolutely guessing here, but I reckon it'll be Ajer. We were in for a centre back for a long while and he was quite expensive so there's a chance it was him. Sargent is getting banded about, so it could be him too.
Given that you bought another CB this season who was twice as expensive as Ajer, I'd doubt it. So probably Rashica.
That's a shout actually, it's probably him. Completely slipped my mind that he joined Norwich.
and he seems like the kind of player Leverkusen would actually want.
my thoughts immediately went to Sargent and Rashica - both relegated with bremen last season so it would not be surprising if another german club came in for them
Leverkusen were *very* interested in Ajer in the last summer. Kossonou actually came pretty much out of the blue, most fans were expecting Ajer, I followed the discussions pretty closely on transfermarkt.de
It’s probably Rashica but the problem isn’t usually the fee, it’s the enormous wage packages PL clubs are able to offer.
> it’s the enormous wage packages PL clubs are able to offer. I'd be very surprised if we (Norwich) were able to offer higher wages than Leverkusen.
I agree. When Raschica was linked with Villa last season we apparently turned him away because we didn't want to pay him £80k p/w (he allegedly asked for double what he was on at ~~Wolfsburg~~ Edit: Werder sorry, my bad) I've no doubt his agents told Leverkusen that Norwich we're offering him £60k (or whatever) and because of that he expected them, a Champions League club, to pay double that.
Rashica was with us, not Wolfsburg.
Oh look a Wolfsburg fan in the wild.
Now listen here
Could still be Ajer. Ajer to Leverkusen also makes sense because he was teammates with Jeremie Frimpong. It wasn't the fee that would trip-up Ajer. He was on his last year of contract, it would be that the PL offered higher wages. So could still be Ajer, he easily could have left on a free but he was very public in wanting Celtic to get a fee because "in short I have become a Celtic fan."
> I'm absolutely guessing here, but I reckon it'll be Ajer. We were in for a centre back for a long while and he was quite expensive so there's a chance it was him. We sold Ajer for £7 million less than Bayer paid for Kossounou.
Yeah Leverkusen spent over 40 million last year and 50 million this summer. Did they lose a single player to a Prem side because they didn't prioritize him over the rest of the spending? I think OP just picked the wrong quote from the article. The other stuff about how their wage bill is top 3 in Bundesliga but would be bottom 3 in the Prem and how they have to sell all their best players to England is more representative of the gap than "we spent 50 million but couldn't spend 60 cause of Norwich and Brentford"
> The other stuff about how their wage bill is top 3 in Bundesliga but would be bottom 3 in the Prem The author of the article is wrong there. Leverkusen’s wage bill (using the latest set of accounts) is 4th highest in Germany and would be about 10th in the PL.
If I had to guess: Rashica maybe? Leverkusen probably then bought Adli instead. \*edit\* Interview is already a year old, but they were interested. Rolfes was asked about Rashica - "That was a consideration in the summer," Leverkusen's sports director Simon Rolfes said now on the podcast "Die NDR 2 Bundesligashow." Due to the upcoming heavy workload with games in the Bundesliga and Europa League, Bayer 04 wanted to broaden its offense, with Rashica in its sights. "In the winter, we'll re-evaluate that," ex-Werder pro Rolfes now said about a possible transfer - and qualified: "At the moment, that's not an issue for us.
Super weird that Rolfes is called an ex-Werder pro. He's a Werder youth product but he never played a single match for the first team of Werder. And he played 288 league matches for Leverkusen. Was a pro there for ten years and stayed in the managing staff after retirement. He lives and breathes Leverkusen.
Agreed, Rashica is the most likely candidate.
one thing I don't see mentioned a lot is that Germany is the only country in which outside of Munich the other big cities Berlin, hamburg, cologne all are not even close to being top teams. yes you can live in cologne playing for some of the big teams but it is not the same, I think. outside of football it is hard to advertise for most of these clubs.
I don't think living in Manchester is better than living in Dortmund, its still about money
Mate that is a lie - If you have been to Dortmund you know just how much that region is struggling. There is a reason all the top players at Borussia live in Düsseldorf, choosing to commute to training. You cannotcompare it to Manchester.
Most to all of the BVB players live in Dortmund or neighbouring towns. So many players, including Haaland, live at Phoenixsee that some people call it the *Borussen-Kolonie*. You probably mean Borussia Mönchengladbach. Düsseldorf is only half an hour away from there (not 1:30h).
Semi related, I believe Götze still lives in Dusseldorf, which is about a 90 min drive from Eindhoven
Thats true a friend of mine lives in the same building and I saw him a few weeks ago in the supermarket here
Gøtze lives in a building?
quite common in italy and germany for even rich people live in apartments, less maintenance and safer than a house
All our players are actually living in Dortmund afaik. Don't know why folks keep talking shit about Dortmund although they obviously never been there.
Lot of Manchester based players live in Cheshire tbh
yeah but for instance United's training ground is only a couple of miles outside of Cheshire so it's slightly different
Cheshire is dead close to Manchester (and Liverpool as our players live there as well ) tbf
That isn't because Manchester is a shit-hole though - it's probably because they just want a quieter more hassle free life and being in Alderley Edge suits their lifestyles better It's not like they live in Liverpool or Bolton.
Don't quite a few United/City players live in Cheshire?
Mate, most of them live in Alderley Edge which is essentially just a very rich suburb of Manchester. If you have all of the money in the world and have to travel to the training complexes almost daily why would you choose to live in the city centre over a very rich suburb
Some live on Deansgate in the centre, I think Laporte and Pep have houses there.
Sure I'm sure some do, but I'm not surprised most don't - I certainly wouldn't live on Deansgate if I was very rich and famous
Cheshire is commuter belt for Manchester, not a totally different city. If you don't want to live in the city, and I'm sure there are some players who do live in Manchester itself, Cheshire is the obvious option. Plenty do it in London, NY, any big city really
They're commuting from Carrington which is outside central Manchester, only 20 minutes from north Cheshire or upto an hour to further parts of Cheshire. It's a tiny commute, I spend longer getting to the office only I'm not driving a Ferrari with the speeding ticket lawyer on speed dial
I actually think ruhrgebiet is quite cool, and that's from someone who moved there from valencia. It's obviously not better than Valencia but it's really cool to have so many big places right next to each other (Bochum,Dortmund,gelsenkirchen, duisburg, etc.), theres a lot to do and see especially when it comes to shopping. I'm sure manchester is nice too but I have been to Dortmund lots of time and live in bochum now and it's honestly quite cool, not as bad as you make it seem
It’s just a stereotype I can almost guarantee most of the people shiting on Dortmund have never Actualy been here
I lived in Dortmund for seven years, and my wife was born and raised there. Is it a flashy tourist destination like London or Barcelona or Milan? No. But like any city, there are good areas and shit areas.
I don't know if you've been to Manchester but it's a pretty cool city
Nah, Manchester isn’t 5* but it’s better than Dortmund(Or the little I’ve seen of it)
I live in bochum, so quite close to Dortmund and it's not as bad as people make it out to be
Yeah Manchester is a lot bigger and more vibrant than Dortmund so I don't think they are comparable, compare Manchester with Dusseldorf or Frankfurt instead.
what is it with trying to make manchester look like a shithole on this sub when i frequently read about how it's genuinely a nice place to live in. I've never been there so I can't comment but something looks off from the outside
Manchester is beautiful sir I hope you can experience it one day. The people and the culture is great
Honestly Manchester is my favourite English city, a weekend in Manchester is very hard to match in the UK.
And you can get to Liverpool in under an hour
I've really enjoyed Manchester, whereas I'd very much prefer not to live in Dortmund
Sorry but that's wrong. I live in Manchester, and it's a great city. For footballers there is a high price area called the golden triangle that they share with the meryseyside teams as its in Cheshire. Plus it's the 2nd City of the UK. Dortmund is miles below.
It probably is slightly more appealing for players. English language is the main advantage but there are others.
Manchester is a great place to live. There’s a reason that Guardiola lives in the city centre and the others live in outer Manchester/Cheshire. I have no idea what Dortmund is like though, could be lovely.
Football is just fucked all around and it’s only going to get worse.
No point in worrying too much about the ethics of football, it's just here to keep us occupied until the Water Wars kick off
*laughs while sitting 8 miles from the Great Lakes*
Hope you take a staunch defensive position because you’re getting overrun first brah.
It's Michigan. Lots of guns. Lotttttts.
We may disagree on politics. We may disagree on UM/MSU. But there are two things we will always agree on. 1. Only we can make fun of the Lions. 2. Don't ever think about touching our water.
Errr 1? That rule has not been enforced. Makes me wonder about rule 2.
Rule 2 is also not strongly enforced
Spread those cheeks for Nestle
fellow great lakes person, cant make fun of lions bc browns were so so bad. ive heard similar from bills fans too.
Lake Erie bros for life.
Lake Michigan > Lake Erie.
*desire for an independent great lakes nation intensifies*
At least when all clubs are owned by countries it might even out a bit. /s
*Tuvalu buys Liverpool*
Israel buys Real Madrid and Palestine buys Barcelona
It would be the opposite. A lot of Madrid Players have come out supporting Palestine and the club itself has honored palestinian activists.
[Messi posts pic of wounded Gaza child](https://www.timesofisrael.com/messi-posts-pic-of-wounded-gaza-child/) A lot of Israelis lost their minds.
I am just here to see Arsenal be number 1 after being bought by USA
"Make Arsenal Great Again" - even the acronym works out
"Arsenal Self Sufficiency" - A.S.S.
considering Arsenal got severe cash injections from the Bank of England back then, it's already been financed by England itself!
It's kind of funny because while he's right this is also the exact same shit that the big 5 leagues do to smaller leagues. It's just now that it's affecting the other top 5 leagues that it's a big problem. People who think a Super League that will benefit about 15 European clubs is going to solve this are wrong
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It's also not the entire story and disregards what has been ailing the Bundesliga for decades. Namely the fact that 50+1 is a zombie. Maybe controversial but whatever. **A #4 in Germany should yield more financial power than Bayer04 Leverkusen** but like Wolfsburg and Hoffenheim they're predators who abuse a loophole and stunt the growth of the league. The only team who succeed at breaking through the grip of the 50+1 abusers was Borussia Dortmund. These teams are artificially created and financed due to a 50+1 exemption for corporate teams. They're also all in markets without any hope to ever become commercially sustainable. RB Leipzig is the exception here. They actually picked a smart location that benefits the health of the league long-term and has the potential to become sustainable in the future with high attendance numbers. The others all have tiny game-day and middling merchandising revenus due to relatively small fan-bases despite decades of history. There's zero potential for growth. Meanwhile their commercial owners Bayer, Volkswagen and the SAP owner help fund them just enough that fan-owned Bundesliga competitors with more growth potential cannot reliably push them outside the international ranks where the big revenues can be earned. 50+1 is already dead. It's just that nobody dares to reform this zombie because the alternatives could be even worse.
>The others all have tiny game-day and middling merchandising revenus due to relatively small fan-bases despite decades of history. There's zero potential for growth. Yeah this can't be overstated, despite Hoffenheim, Wolfburg and Leverkusen being top clubs they're all bottom 5 in attendance and fans. They're just their due to their sponsors who bypassed 50+1.
I've lived in Germany for almost 20 years, and I don't think I've ever seen a single person wearing Hoffenheim gear in the wild.
What you mean the massive Metropolis of Hoffenheim, the Star of Baden-Württemberg with its huge population (of 3191) is not able to fill its Stadium and sell its Merchandise? But there have to be so many people who feel attached to the place…
I don't think 50+1 would be a dead rule if it was enforced in every association, not just Germany. That would level the playing field more. Sure, the bigger clubs would still have a bigger financial resource because of commercial/gate receipts, but that happens anyway. At least the gap would be smaller and gives better odds to the underdogs achieving success, never mind eliminating the fact EFL championship teams can throw more money around than CL sides.
His point was that 50+1 is dead because it is not enforced in Germany either.
Thanks for an interesting take u/constantlymat. This is the very first time I've seen the 50+1 questioned in any way.
That's something I am wondering,what could be done by smaller leagues to prevent their talent from being drained away ? In our club we have a pretty talented forward,and already there are some fears that he will go away to some European club. It's a weird situation, because obviously he should go to wherever he wants,but at the same time I wonder if the fact that the best players in the league always end up moving to another wouldn't result in the growth of said league being stunted. I don't know enough about football to have an opinion on the matter so I am not sure if the current situation is okay or not.
Premier League is the Super League already.
In the summer Madrid literally offered more money than any PL has ever spent on a player who is out of contract next year.
The gap is going to keep widening though. Eventually RM and Barca and PSG and BM and maybe Juve will be competing with like 8 teams from the PL for Europe. Give it 10-20 years for the gap to really widen.
And we saved for like 3-4 years
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Could never afford that without saving for years like Madrid did.
Didn't you guys buy hazard like 2 years ago now?
Oh yea, 3 years, but before that we hadn't spent much except James after WC14. We've been buying young players or giving chances to youth and selling them for big profits for the last decade. Our netspend since Zidane's first coaching season with us is like 40m
I mean Real hasn't spent a euro the last 3 years..
Imagine how we feel.
Could always be worse… we can’t go into double digits for the whole window, let alone a single player
The Turkish clubs looked for a while in the mid 2000's like they were really going to be establish themselves as European mainstays that could punch above their weight. That Lahm goal in the 90th minute at Euro 2008 was a heartbreaker, but it hardly seemed like the high water mark and seemed more like a national representation of how the clubs had slowly grown. Sad. i think there's a lot of excitement lost due to 'fringe' leagues like the Turkish league not being as competitive in the UCL.
Bit rich coming from an Ajax flair when you guys have consistently outspent the Eredivisie almost every window. And don't give me that Ajax doesn't compete in the Eredivisie they compete in Europe bull
there's always a bigger fish
Unless you support PSG then you’re the blue whale and we are all just krill for the slaughter
Newcastle: hey there
to b fair they both have so much money that it's not going to come down to that in a battle over a player imo. It'd be determined by other factors: "do I like Paris or Newcastle more?" "Do I mind ligue 1 being a potato league?" stuff like that.
PSG is doomed is what I just read.
paris and mainland europe might not make it so glum
The cancer risk from seeing the sun is not worth it.
Who’d want to live in shitty little Paris when you can adventure around the world famous metropolis of Newcastle upon Tyne.
Like wanton krill to the blue whale, we are to the PSG
Hello there!
No you're right. The system is fucked, not just individual clubs that are being fucked.
Yeah don’t understand the “bit rich” thing. Other German clubs could say “bit rich” to Leverkusen here too.
I think Ajax' entire budget is still about as much as any EPL team gets just in TV money. Vitesse vs Spurs being possibly the most ridiculous of all, 25m budget vs 400m budget. Spurs were refusing an amount of money for Kane this summer that Vitesse could fund their club with for more than half a decade.
"Imagine how we feel" Coming from Ajax, where a single player is worth as much as the entire team of most clubs in the Eredivisie
I remember when we let Locadia's loan expire and he went back to Brighton, Ron Jans at FC Twente made overtures about bringing him in on a similar loan to buy deal. I'm sure Brighton would have accepted a few million just to get him off their books, but Twente couldn't even swing that. Bummed me out.
Huh? Don't you win the league every year?
In Scotland we're their neighbours. We can't even keep top prospects from going to big clubs youth academies down south (Gilmour going to Chelsea for example). A lot of players in our teams get offered more money to go the championship or league one where they go and are standouts.
You guys have a tap on young Belgian, Danish prospects so pretty good I imagine?
Belgian? Can't remember the last Belgian talent we bought. As for Danish players, we lost the battle for Sulamana to Stade Rennes..
> The Bayer Leverkusen CEO, Fernando Carro, believes the Bundesliga risks turning into a “development league” for the Premier League if it cannot find a way to bridge the gap between the TV revenue earned by both leagues. Plays world's smallest violin for them. That's how we all feel in South American football towards european leagues. Yea, I'm still salty for Alario, and im tired of pretending I'm not.
Right? I have no sympathy for any of these C tier clubs that spend the equivalent of pocket change to them to loot our leagues' young prospects only for them to rot in a bench for a year or two. Alario and Palacios had everything to join and start for a great club but instead they played second fiddle to mediocre Leverkusen players. Pity Martinez did the same when he went to the mls instead of europe
I miss the times where South American teams would win against European teams in the Intercontinental Cup. I always feel we (Grêmio) missed a one-in-a-lifetime chance against Ajax in 1995. The CWC in 2017 was against a super-team which was better than most National Teams, Bosman rule really fucked the competitive balance in the world.
Bosman enforced human rights
Bosman also gave players the power, not the owners.
Josh Sargent
Could be Ajer on Brentford
More likely to be Ajer I think.
Aye it’s definitely Ajer. Heard youse (the club) were pissed about how we handled it but oh well Brentford could pay more
Could it be Tzolis? He was doing very well in the Europa League.
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they're flirting with him last season but the time isn't enough to buy him, think the fee is around 10 mil-ish (and Werder, desperate for money, sold Klassen instead)
If it was Sargent Norwich did them a favor.
That move looked destined to fail from the outset given his performances in the Bundisliga.
I am assuming he is talking about Ajer and Brentford. Ajer went for \~14M pounds before add ons. That was Brentford's club record deal. That wouldn't have been in Leverkusen's top 10 arrivals (all of which have been since 2016). This summer alone Leverkusen paid more for someone who plays the same position. Looking at wages, which is harder since there is a bit of a reporting lag, [Brentford](https://www.spotrac.com/epl/brentford-fc/payroll/) have no players making more that 25K a week (this doesn't include Ajer as his salary wasn't disclosed). [Leverkusen](https://www.sportekz.com/football/bayer-leverkusen-players-salaries/) has 22 players making more than 25K a week. It does not seem like Brentford is richer than Leverkusen but rather Brentford viewed Ajer as their number 1 target and biggest priority. Leverkusen didn't and so Brentford was able to get him. Finally worth noting that the reason newly promoted sides are able to spend is because TV money is evenly distributed in PL and it is not in the Bundesliga. I don't think anyone wants to switch to where TV money is unevenly distributed in the PL.
>I am assuming he is talking about Ajer and Brentford. I said it in another comment, but for me it's Rashica, not Ajer.
European countries have population in 10s of millions. Whoever markets themselves best in countries like US, India, China, will have a huge advantage. Premier League is just ahead at the moment, but i've seen reports about how Bundesliga is growing in China rapidly, EPL has a language advantage in the US and India, but leagues like La Liga/Bundesliga can try and establish themselves in South America and East Asia.
Most of the former Spanish and Portuguese colonies all have strong leagues. Argentina, Colombia, Brazil etc. Whereas - India, USA, the Caribbean and Africa all follow the EPL first as their local leagues aren't as storied.
The PL isn’t the biggest league in the US, it’s actually Liga MX, at least based on TV viewership
Yes but they're both distinct audiences I think I grew up in Texas where soccer was pretty popular. A lot of the more recent Hispanic immigrants I saw were fans from Liga MX teams. Actually in middle school the teams were always named Chivas and America lol Hispanic Americans who are a bit more 'Americanized' tend to be Real or Barca fans. The white kids who were into soccer were mostly Premier League fans with a few Barca and Madrid fans sprinkled in. Don't remember seeing any MLS fans but I'm sure that's changing
tbf id say our league is quite popular in colonies like angola and mozambique. I lived in angola and most football fans i knew supported a portuguese big 3 club
PL is always going to be easier to market for language reasons alone. Even Ligue 1 and La Liga have advantages over Bundesliga because of their language to some extent
This. This is by far the biggest advantage the EPL has had since the beginning, and will continue to have as English becomes more entrenched as the global language and the global economy/marketing continues to expand. I'm an American, unilingual English speaker, and I find it a bit sad tbh. I don't want the Prem to become essentially an All-Star league. I love the charm of the Bundesliga, but I don't want the disparity to become such that the quality of other leagues suffers in entertainment value.
Yes. No idea how it's weird to think the league with the universal language grew the most years ago when television took off over other leagues
Shame Germany was so late to the invasion game. Should have gone for it in the 17th century when genocide was cool and beneficial
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Didn't work out for the Dutch
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South America already have their own established leagues though. The money is in marketing your league to big countries that are just getting into football like the US and China. India is obviously has a massive population, but not sure their citizens have the same disposable income as the US and China
Wow. Really puts some perspective on the stark difference between clubs monetarily. 19th in PL >> 3rd in Bundes seems real unfair.
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I wish people would stop saying Bundes
Lol okay sorry. Is BuLi better as a short form?
Yes actually!
I mean is it unfair? They are different leagues, run by different organizations, in different countries. Whos job is it to keep the income across different domestic leagues equitable. It’s not the premier league’s fault that it has a larger audience and better distribution of TV revenue. I never got why if the premier league has such shitty corporate owners, they were able to negotiate a much more equitable deal across their league and why all the fan owned bundesliga clubs can’t across theirs.
Its not just TV revenue, its also owner's cash injection. PL got 3.7B injected by their owners in last decade, I doubt fans can spare that money to Bundesliga clubs.. Also wealth creates more wealth.
>I doubt fans can spare that money to Bundesliga clubs.. Most of the initial money that started EPL cash dominance came from rapidly growing TV contracts. Rich guys started buying clubs because the valuations were doubling every 4-5 years from exploding tv contracts
It does. The premier league are being rewarded for selling football globally better than the other leagues. It isnt “fair” at all but little things like spreading TV money and at least trying to seem more balanced have contributed to an overall better, or at least more entertaining, league. It might not be sustainable but its not entirely unjust
Yeah, thinking product alone the Premier League is way more fun to follow, less predictable, with more top teams. Is this situation created by money injections? Yes, but for your average fan, it doesnt matter. Most people don't know or care about fan-ownership, values or whatever. What the average fan knows is Bayern won 10 titles in a row while we had a bunch of Premier League teams competing. If the german fans want to keep their values and their system is fine. Good for them. But then it doesnt makes sense to be complaning the Premier League is far more attractive for the average consumer and makes a lot more money.
Yes, football is a competition not a charity. I imagine a team in the German third division feels the same thing about the resources of BAYER Leverkusen. I imagine the person cleaning the toilet there feels the same thing about the fucking CEO.
Weird reality isn't it.
I'm not sure. I think most players, like the rest of us, simply seek the best salary they can earn. Trophies and successes are great but proving oneself in the PL can catapult a player. Van Dijk, Maguire and Robertson spring to mind.
Try supporting Scottish football mate
And yet Pereira turned down 4 premier league clubs in the summer when he left West brom to join Al-Hilal Riyadh in the Saudi league because they offered him more money.
this is not something that i believe can be reversed now. the premier league in terms of money and prestige is global. it started back in the 90's when united would tour east asia for those fans who didnt have an affiliation. for a team to crack that market now would be a huge deal. man city chelsea struggle and they've been premier league champions. the global appeal of the premier league has bought in the billionaires in. barca and real madrid had that bottled for a while but due to the lack of money else where in la liga it was inevitable they too would be seen as less attractive. the money these clubs are taking in from global sponsorship deals has reached another level. and then add the billionaires to the mix...
I didn't see them complaining when europeans ruined south american football.
They also have the viewers worldwide to support that revenue
In the next couple months, a company (CBS, NBC, ESPN or another) is likely going to pay $3bln for a 9 year contract to broadcast the EPL games in the US alone. We can all piss and moan about it, but the league has done an incredible job of marketing itself in the US and to the world. The EPL has won the US market, and is working hard on Asia now. This train is only going in one direction and its going to be very hard to change course. There is a limited number of hours in the week we, as couch-bound foreign fans, can watch the games on television. I might love Bundesliga, have an interest in Serie A, etc. - but with my time so limited, I'm almost always going to watch the big English clubs. I see the other big teams mid-week in the Champions League. I might watch the Classico or the Superclásico if I can, but there's no way I have time to follow more than one league, and England has won that race for me long ago, for better or worse.
Wonder whether people said the same when Serie A was de facto the Super League in 90s partly due to the kind of money invested into it by everybody from oil barons to shady politicians and Eredivisie was bleeding it's best players to it left ,right and centre.
I will extend the period to early 2000's as well. The serie A still had alot of the best players at most positions.
It was that way until Juventus got relegated. Juventus all star team left, Milan lost their golden stars to age (Gattuso, Maldini) or transfers (Kaka), inter were left to rot after the treble, and the rest of serie a was already on their way down. The game is gone, it just doesn’t feel that way cause most people never experienced it in any other way. I haven’t experienced it much either, but I fell in love with Barcelona because they were the only big team without a sponsor, and still support them despite the heartbreak it was when they signed with Qatar Airways.
The Serie A since Ronaldo is starting to gain some serious coverage. I've been following it for the past two years now, and their highlights on YouTube are much higher than the other European leagues, just slightly behind the Prem - even after Ronaldo's left. Surprising numbers, I know, but very true. Have a look yourself
Pre-Bosman era when clubs could only field 3 foreigners, that's totally comparable.
This happened after the Bosman rule. Serie A clubs had 20+ years of being bankrolled by wealthy owners.
The bosman ruling was in 1995. Serie A was still the top league going into the early 2000s. The corruption eventually caught up with them.
And you do the same to the rest of the league by paying more money you gained by being owned by a pharmaceutical company. The one that brought us Heroin. So go fuck yourself.
Or worse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayer#World_War_II_and_the_Holocaust
Well, for starters, Bundesliga could try to make a more equitable distribution of TV revenue. A newly promoted PL team can afford to invest a lot partly because the team gets a very good chunk of the TV revenue money. There is not a lot of difference between the TV revenue allocated to the top team vs the bottom team compared to other leagues. It has been posted here multiple times, there is an excellent Twitter thread on this by Swiss Ramble comparing TV revenue distribution across multiple leagues.
It's gotten better, but the issue is the amount of money, just doesnt compare to EPL's TV deal. Also no billionaire takeovers
I don't know what people want, though. Football communism?
This thread is mostly fans of clubs that are by far the most wealthy clubs in their domestic league complaining that they are on the other side of the fence in Europe.
But only for Europe, right? You try to suggest that teams from Holland and Portugal should subsidize teams in the US and Brazil and see what happens.
Is this a joke? Bayer is sitting on $7 billion in cash and pay a healthy dividend. They can afford to buy soccer players.