Just when it seemed like FC Bayern's front office would be forced to turn elsewhere, the club was able to agree to a deal with Manchester City for the services of Jerome Boateng. The defender had agreed to contract terms with Bayern a month ago, but City was holding out for the highest possible transfer price. Their insistence on a € 20 million fee threatened to scuttle the deal, but once they brought in two defenders last week it became pretty clear that they were willing to get rid of Boateng.
The final deal works out to about € 13.5 million, which I believe it about what City paid for him a year ago. It appears that KHR and Christian Nerlinger played this pretty well - they came up a bit from their initial € 10 million offer but then refused to accept City's inflated demands. When we got into July and City hadn't budged, Bayern started to look at other CBs. Whether this was a decoy tactic or whether Bayern actually had an interest in other players will remain an unsolved mystery, but either way it appeared to work out to our benefit - € 13.5 million is a fair price for a guy who has Boateng's pedigree and has played well in the Bundesliga before. His recent knee injury is worrisome, but nothing is a sure thing. This was probably the best outcome we could have hoped for.
So, our rebuilt back-line looks like this:
Lahm - Badstuber - Boateng - Rafinha
Neuer
Pretty solid. van Buyten and Breno provide back-up at the CB positions, Contento for the corners, and Gustavo can fill in if needed. Considering our defensive struggles last season, this was the biggest need area, and Nerlinger and the rest of the front office did a good job of addressing it.
More on this later, I just wanted to get a post up so people could discuss (and so I would have something to link to in a tweet). JB is expected to join up with the club as early as tomorrow.