Bayern Munich may tour South America next summer

The 2018 Audi Summer Tour of the USA was a great success — at least off the pitch. Bayern Munich may have lost its two friendly matches against Juventus and Manchester City, but the feeling in the club is that the Bavarians’ latest trip to the States was a resounding success. Now the club is weighing the possibility of staying “out west” next summer, touring South America rather than returning to East Asia.

James Rodriguez is of course the key. As Bayern Munich’s executive board member for internationalization and strategy Jörg Wacker explained, “Miami was deliberately chosen. It is the gateway to South and Latin America, a market we are busy with.” It was not lost on the Bayern leaders “what a superstar James is here. You can hardly go out on the street with him.”

But bringing the fans closer to superstars like James has spurred a new idea the board are currently considering: rather than alternating between the Americas and Asia, focusing especially on the USA and China, Bayern may adopt a two-year rotation that would enable the club to highlight their international stars. Wacker explained:

Independently of James, it’s important that our superstars show themselves in these markets. In the past five years, we had our superstars with us in China every time. Now in the USA, both because of the Euro 2016 and the World Cup 2018, that was not the case.

Hence, a two-year rotation between the eastern and western hemispheres would make good sense, and South America may be the first venue to benefit:

We are playing with the idea that we go to one market two years in a row and the other market two years in a row. We’ll discuss that now in depth. But it’s easy to see that South America can also be a destination, when you have a superstar like James.

That of course sounds like yet another clue that Bayern Munich’s executive board has absolutely no plans of authorizing James Rodriguez’s departure this year or any other, as if they needed another reason.

Source: AZ