Daily Schmankerl: Bayern contacts Eriksen, ManUtd watching Müller, UEFA rigged the #TeamOfTheYear for Ronaldo, and more!

Salihamidzic contacts Eriksen (Sky)

Christian Eriksen has been linked to Bayern Munich for so long now, it seems rather late in the day to hear that sporting director Hasan Salihamidzic contacted the player or his circle recently. But Eriksen will be out of contract at the end of the season, so it is now or never for Tottenham Hotspur to sell him.

Tottenham’s price is reportedly €20m. Inter Milan has been in talks with Eriksen most recently, but Sky’s transfer expert Marc Behrenbeck claims, “There also was contact between Hasan Salihamidzic and Eriksen’s agent again.”

Whatever the contact may have been — a friendly “hi” on WhatsApp? — the odds that Bayern would actually sign Eriksen are minute. Behrenbeck says, “Even if the transfer is very unlikely, a club like FC Bayern has to knock on Eriksen’s door, so as not to shut it completely for a transfer.”

Manchester United monitoring Thomas Μüller (The Sun)

Manchester United is “keeping tabs” Bayern Munich’s Thomas Muller, since they haven’t noticed that Müller is now a part of Bayern’s starting lineup again and producing assists like nobody’s business.

The Sun thinks United might try to sign Müller this summer, since his contract expires in 2021, but don’t hold your breath.

Bayern passed on Marin Pongracic (kicker)

Marin Pongracic is a new face in the Bundesliga: the Croatian center-back just joined VfL Wolfsburg from RB Salzburg, where he signed a contract through 2024.

Kicker learned that Bayern had also been keeping an eye on Pongracic, but ultimately decided against pursuing him seriously. He played in Bayern’s youth academy until 2013, when he transferred to Ingolstadt.

Of course UEFA rigged the Team of the Year 2019 to fit in Ronaldo (Daily Mail)

You mean to tell me that the preposterous 4-2-4 “Team of the Year” featuring four forwards was manipulated!?

The UEFA Team of the Year is already a popularity contest. And then there’s UEFA’s own interests. After the fans gave more awards to Lionel Messi, Robert Lewandowski, and Sadio Mané, UEFA decided to change the basic formation from a 4-3-3 to a 4-2-4 so that they could cram fourth-place Ronaldo into a lineup that would go down in flames against most good teams, because four strikers cannot actually all have the ball at the same time.

The Mail writes,

It can now be disclosed that the reason for doing so was because the Portuguese megastar finished fourth in the forwards category, behind rival Lionel Messi, Liverpool’s Sadio Mane and Bayern Munich’s Robert Lewandowski.

UEFA chiefs were not impressed and so came up with the formation switch to allocate Juventus’s Ronaldo, dropping a midfielder. The unlucky man is understood to have been Chelsea’s N’Golo Kante.

The move raises serious questions over the integrity of the exercise and fans of the Chelsea man, not to mention the player himself, may well be furious.

Imagine that! The Daily Fail is raising serious questions about the integrity of something literally organized by UEFA. What do they think this is, the Ballon d’Or?

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