Media War Update: Manchester City demand £137m for Leroy Sane

In an unprecedented move by Bayern Munich, the club have issued an official statement denying recent reports that they have reached an agreement with Manchester City winger Leroy Sane. This comes just hours after both kicker and Bild reported that the young winger had agreed to join the German Rekordmeister.

Here is the statement in question:

That’s almost a word-for-word translation of the original German, which is partly why it looks so funny when written in English. Apparently no one on Bayern’s social media team had the time to craft a better-worded translation.

This of course is sort of a blow to people who were expecting Sane to be flying in any minute now, but it makes sense. While everyone else was going crazy over the news, TZ journalist Manuel Bonke claimed that nothing was yet agreed and there are still negotiations going on between all parties. Apparently he was correct.

The other possibility is that the deal is close and Bayern are issuing these official statements to avoid jeopardizing negotiations with Man City. There is a precedent — Liverpool had to do something similar back in the day, to placate an enraged Southampton after they got caught leaking news about Virgil van Dijk to the media. Is that what this is? We don’t know.

What we do know is that this saga is dragging on for way too long, and needs to end soon for the sake of our sanity. Someone make it stop, please.

Update

Kicker have posted an update to their article, stating that despite Bayern’s denial on twitter, Sane has indeed decided to join the club. They specify a 100m euro transfer fee and a 4-5 year contract for the player. This doesn’t change much in the grand scheme of things, but this entire sequence of events is pretty unusual.

Update 2

This is escalating into a full-on media war between Manchester City and Bayern Munich. Reports from England say that City will only accept £137m for a potential Sane transfer, making him the most expensive player in the world behind Neymar. This is undoubtedly a media strategy concocted by City to put pressure on Bayern during negotiations. Will it work? It remains to be seen.