Daily Schmankerl: Man City wants Alaba for Sané, Bayern offers Kai Havertz personal terms, Barca rules out Bundesliga targets?

Man City interested in David Alaba for Leroy Sané (Sport)

Manchester City still has a fearsome offense, but their defense has all but tanked their season. Well, “tanked” insofar as put them in second place, some 25 points behind world-beaters Liverpool.

Anyway, fixing their leaky defense is a major priority for City and Pep Guardiola. Hence, the Citizens supposedly would like to strike a deal with Bayern Munich for David Alaba. Alaba, of course, is about to hire Pini Zahavi to represent him as he heads into the last year of his contract.

Sport reasons that Alphonso Davies has challenged Alaba’s status as an undisputed starter at left-back and Alaba supposedly was already looking for a way out.

But there’s a bit of a transfer-rumor rabbit hole to the story as well. Sport claims that Barcelona wants Alaba, too, and they cites Manchester Evening (i.e., the Manchester Evening News aka MEN) for the information that “the Barça club cannot compete with the salary offered by the ‘Citizens.’”

But if you check out MEN (what am I writing?), they MENsplain that “according to Sport, via SportWitness” (¿no se habla español?) “the Blues are very interested in the Austrian international and, though they face competition with Barcelona, they would be able to meet his salary demands whereas the Catalans would not.” The circle is complete.

Oh, and by the way...

FC Barcelona rules out all its Bundesliga targets (Mundo Deportivo)

Maybe Barca doesn’t want Alaba after all? Well, who knows. But Mundo Deportivo claims that FC Barcelona’s only targets this coming summer will supposedly be Lautaro Martínez and Neymar. That would mean no Timo Werner, who is more likely to go elsewhere anyway.

Barca has also supposedly ruled out several other Bayern targets as well: RB Leipzig’s Dayot Upamecano, Bayer Leverkusen’s Kai Havertz, and (drumroll) David Alaba. That at least sounds good.

About Kai Havertz, by the way...

Bayern makes wages offer to Kai Havertz (AZ)

I am not familiar with Nicolò Schira. He says he’s an “expert in transfermarkt” on his Twitter profile. At any rate, he claims that Bayern Munich has offered personal terms to Kai Havertz to the tune of a 5-year contract at €8m a year (presumably gross).

If true, that’s good. The player, of course, is the simpler side of the equation. The real dilemma will be Leverkusen, whose front office is dead-set on squeezing in excess of €100m out of the eventual buyer.

Dinamo Zagreb ultras help Croatian army after earthquake destroys maternity ward

Hello, I’d like to report a crime

That’s Washington State’s Brianna Alger.

German chancellor Angela Merkel quarantined after contact tests positive — and delivers remarkable speech

This is indeed all over the news:

More significant than that, however, Merkel gave a remarkable televised address on Sunday to explained what she and the German government are doing and — probably above all — to tell the German people, “It is serious.” Wherever you are, it is a well worth listening to her speech. Here it is with English subtitles:

In her 15 years as chancellor, Merkel has given exactly one televised address, this one. Please stay safe, stay home, and stay healthy.