Daily Schmankerl: Gnabry/Griezmann swap!? (lol), Boateng and Sané trade selfie tips, Bild reporter catches coronavirus, and more!

Griezman/Gnabry swap... because reasons!

I don’t even know where to start with this one. Here’s @Bayern_mania with a supposed “exclusive” (ha!):

As I’ve said before, the best exclusive stories are the ones you invent, and that seems to be the case here. The guy behind this exclusive is someone named Adrián Sánchez. I followed the link to his Twitter profile and learned he’s a freelance sports journalist who has a Youtube channel called “More than Balls” — except in Spanish.

Anyway, I found the source of Bayern Mania’s “EXCLUSIVE” tweet:

The BOMB of @_AdrianSnchz is Gnabry!

A trade between Bayern and Barça for Gnabry and Griezmann to close one of the signings of the summer.

(They’re) looking to rejuvenate the squad... #FIFA20

“They” here is presumably Barcelona, since that’s the team Sánchez covers, and Gnabry is the younger player. But something seems . . . off. What’s that about #FIFA20? And what about that link he provides? It takes you to a twenty-minute video where Sánchez proceeds to create a doppelganger of himself as the manager of Barcelona and then launches into various transfer deals. He gets to Gnabry around minute 17:30.

Yes, indeed: in cut scenes that remind me of Grand Theft Auto, our Sánchez doppelganger makes a move for Gnabry by offering Bayern Munich Antoine Griezmann in a straight swap plus cash — in the game, the mysterious Bayern sporting director first asks for €5m to take Griezmann, but Sánchez talks him down to €3.38m. Deal. Gnabry and his agent then agree to a five-year contract.

Seriously. I almost feel bad for that anonymous digital Bayern sporting director, because digital Karl-Heinz Rummenigge and digital Olli Kahn are going to rend him limb from limb when he gets back to Säbener Strasse.

Anyway, not exactly the most reliable source, was it? This is why I muted Bayern Mania two years ago or so.

Naby Keita back to RB Leipzig? (Bild)

This is one of those stories or headlines that ceases to make sense as soon as you think about it. Naby Keita took the Bundesliga by storm when he arrived at Leipzig, but he has not succeeded to secure a steady place in Jürgen Klopp’s Liverpool. He’s under contract until 2023 but is likely to leave the club this summer.

Could that mean he goes back to RB Leipzig, Bild wonders? Well, no. Probably not.

Keita left two years ago for a record fee of €65m, but there’s virtually no way that penny-pinching Leipzig would overpay like a Premier League Club to bring him back. He’d have to take a major pay cut on top of that.

You never know in soccer, they say, but, personally, I think Keita is more likely to end up at a Premier League rival or an upper-table team in Italy or Spain than in the Bundesliga again.

Leroy Sané asks Boateng for selfie tips

German national team donates €2.5m to help fight the coronavirus

We had more on this yesterday in connection with Jogi Löw’s somber video press conference.

Tom “the Kraken” Starke celebrates 39

What a team player! Or... as someone pithily put it on Twitter,

Bild’s Heiko Niedderer the first to catch the virus (Bild+, duh)

One of the Bild reporters we regularly follow here at BFW was the first at his publication to become infected with the coronavirus: Heiko Niedderer gave a firsthand account of how he became infected while on vacation in Austria and his scramble to get tested once home in Germany.

Niedderer and several friends went skiing in Ischgl, Austria, and met several other friends there at a very cramped local bar. Two days later, just as they departed for home, all the bars in Ischgl were closed as confirmed cases of the virus multiplied locally.

By the end of the week, news of Germans infected in Ischgl hit the headlines, and soon Niedderer and his friends all showed symptoms.

I myself had a slight fever, back pain, a somewhat sore throat. Normally nothing wild, but now — CORONA?

That’s what it was, but getting tested proved to be very difficult. Meanwhile the first of his friends (and eventually seven more) tested positive, Getting a hold of the right people on the phone proved difficult. Eventually, since Niedderer could not reach anyone at the Department of Health, his personal doctor had him bike over to get tested behind her private practice. The next day he knew: positive.

Fortunately for Niedderer, the virus took “overall a rather mild course” in his case. He concludes:

Stay home and behave as if you already have the virus. If it is so hard to test people, there definitely will be very many people running around outside with the coronavirus...

Chelsea lets NHS use team hotel during crisis

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