Daily Schmankerl: Real Madrid to trade Luka Jovic for Lewandowski or Gnabry; AC Milan and BVB interested in Mai; Champions League wrap-up, and more!

Champions League: Bayer Leverkusen tanks, bad guys win

While Bayern Munich was battling for a positive result in Piraeus, Bayer Leverkusen tried in vain to avoid its third consecutive defeat. Peter Bosz’s men tried to play it safe. They had more of the ball, more shots, and the usual luck. Alvaro Morata scored the only goal with a header when ‘kusen vacated the field for Lodi to deliver a nice cross. Leverkusen has lost all three of their opening matches. They’re as good as eliminated.

Elsewhere, Manchester City crushed Atalanta 5-1 behind a hat-trick by Raheem Sterling and a brace by Sergio Aguero. Phil Foden was sent off in the 81’ minute, so City might have to try a little harder next time.

Juventus went down 1-0 to Lokomotiv Moscow after half an hour, but the train never reached the station after Paulo Dybala scored two goals in as many minutes. Tottenham Hotspur rediscovered the joy of winning with a 5-0 win over Red Star.

PSG looked rather suboptimal scoring only one goal in the entire first half. They added four more after Kylian Mbappé came on in the 51’ minute. You may have heard of him. He’s pretty good: he scored three goals of his own and assisted one more by Mauro Icardi.

And Real Madrid beat Galatasaray 1-0 thanks to a goal by Toni Kroos assisted by Eden Hazard. That result puts Real in second place in Group A, behind PSG.

Real Madrid to trade for Lewandowski this January, bring him to Madrid in a pumpkin coach pulled by pink unicorns (OKDiario)

Astounding news from Spain! The director of OKDiario went on TV and revealed exclusive information that Real Madrid was going to make Bayern a deal they could not refuse this January: they will take Robert Lewandowski off Bayern’s hands, not for money, but in trade!

The Polish player, an icon of the Bavarian team, is in the crosshairs of the Blancos’ front office and their intention is to request a transfer in exchange for Gareth Bale [!!!] or Luka Jovic [!!!!]. At the Blancos’ club they expect Bayern to accept this favor on account of their past history of transfers with James Rodriguez. “Real Madrid is considering a trade between Jovic and Lewandowski in January,” Eduardo Inda said of the operation.

Sounds like a deal to me! The Bayern front office feels very awkward about the fact that Lewandowski has scored 20 goals in 17 games and it’s only October. Winning games on all that “individual brilliance” instead of beautiful, Guardiola-esque teamwork is a bad look, so they’ll be sure to take Bale (2 goals, 2 assists in 7 games) or Jovic (errr, nada in 9 games) to even things out. The sooner the better! Hence he’ll board a magical pumpkin coach and a team of Spanish-speaking pink unicorns will carry him to Madrid in the January transfer window.

But wait, there’s more! Real wants to trade Jovic for Gnabry! (Don Balon)

The LOLs are coming hot and fast today: according to the Don, the most reliable news source in Spain, Real Madrid is counting on its “good relations” with Bayern Munich to negotiate a totally different trade from the one outlined above: Los Blancos want to trade Luka Jovic (0 goals, 1 start) for Serge Gnabry (6 goals, 5 assists, 11 games).

Now they could reload to get a player called on to be Robert Lewandowski’s backup, who needs to take it easy. In return, Madrid would ask that Serge Gnabry, one of the big stars in Niko Kovac’s squad, who is enjoying a sensational start both at Bayern and the German national team, be included in the transaction.

See, if you go on Transfermarkt, you’ll find that Serge is valued at €60m, EXACTLY THE SAME AS LUKA JOVIC! So you know it’s a fair trade. Bayern still has too many starters on the German national team anyway.

AC Milan, Borussia Dortmund interested in Lars Lukas Mai (Calciomercato)

According to Calciomercato, AC Milan might want to take a gamble on Bayern’s 19-year-old center-back prospect Lars Lukas Mai:

The Rossoneri are following 19-year-old defender Lars Lukas Mai. The teenager is captain of Bayern’s Under 19 squad, appearing in every game for them in the league so far this season. His contract expires with the German side in 2022, but the Rossoneri may be keen to take a chance on the young defender before he breaks into the club’s first team.

Mai is safely under contract and has played regularly for Bayern II in the 3.Liga this season. He has started and played a full 90 minutes in eleven games. Is it merely coincidence that he extended his contract with Bayern Munich just days ago? Probably not.

Karl-Heinz Rummenigge’s banquet speech (FCBayernTV)

The video is in German and not dubbed, but whether you understand the chairman or not it is fascinating to see how the team must present itself before a hall of people and listen to their CEO critique their performance.

I don’t think that the performance we delivered this evening will bring us great successes at the end of the day in this year unless we slowly get our act together.

You can read the entire speech here:

Record breaking defense...

Record-breaking offense! Lewy passes van Nistelrooy

Serdar Tasci currently out of contract... just sayin’ (Transfermarkt)

Tasci was let go by Turkish club Basaksehir this summer. Transfermarkt estimates the 32-year-old’s current value at €700,000. A steal!

Photo by A. Beier/FC Bayern via Getty Images

Your Daily Christian Falk Flex:

Rumor dynamo Christian Falk has reported that United are interested to hire the services of Ralf Rangnick.

United are currently in 14th position in the Premier League and many of their problems have been attributed to the lack of a sporting director. Ralf Rangnick would be a promising addition, as he held the sporting director position for both RB Salzburg and RB Leipzig. As a first-team manager, he simultaneously took Leipzig to the German top tier as a coach in the 2015-16 season.

It should be noted that Falk also flexed Rangnick’s interest to join Bayern.