“Dirty lies!” Zahavi and George Alaba lash back at Uli Hoeness

“David Alaba has a greedy piranha for an agent,” said former Bayern Munich president Uli Hoeness on SPORT1’s “Doppelpass” program on Sunday. Now that agent, Pini Zahavi, and the player’s father George have struck back at Hoeness in comments to Sky.

The piranha in question, Zahavi, outright rejected Hoeness’s claim that he is demanding an eight-figure sum for himself as an agent’s fee. Bild claims that Zahavi is asking for a whopping €20 million, but Zahavi himself told Sky the following:

“At no point have I talked in detail about any kind of commission with the Bayern officials. The only time that the topic was raised was at our meeting in Lisbon. Hasan Salihamidzic asked me there what I thought about it. I told him that we should first work on an agreement with the player, but I would not ask for more than the usual. I don’t want to get more than other agents who have received commissions from Bayern. Again: we have not yet talked about numbers!”

George Alaba was even less charitable to Hoeness, who described him as fallen under Zahavi’s greedy influence. Sky says that Alaba’s inner circle is “very surprised” by Uli Hoeness’s actions. They stated that Hoeness had met Zahavi only once and had never spoken with him personally, so he did not even know the Israeli, let alone judge him. “They moreover were surprised that a club as big as FC Bayern would want to publicly damage the image of a player and his agent,” Sky writes.

George Alaba gave the following statement:

“I brought David Alaba to FC Bayern as a youth. Several times over all the years, I had the opportunity to transfer David to another club. But we were loyal and always decided in favor of staying. I never expected that FC Bayern would now spread dirty lies about salary and commission demands. To claim that we would not come to an agreement to sign because of such a payment is one of these dirty allegations. And all that merely because we don’t accept the numbers they’ve presented us. We have our own ideas.”

Sky says, according to their information, Bayern and Alaba’s camp are at odds over the length of his contract and his salary. Bayern is currently offering a four-year deal, but Zahavi and Alaba want five years.

Before Zahavi joined Alaba’s team, Sky states, Bayern had offered him a net salary of €7.5 million including bonuses. They have since improved their offer, but Alaba still would not be one of Bayern’s top earners. “A person close to the negotiations” told Sky that “Bayern calls Alaba the ‘new Beckenbauer’ [sic] publicly, but is not prepared to pay him a corresponding salary.”

Zahavi and Alaba reject the rumors that they are demanding a gross salary of €25 million. That number is wrong and Robert Lewandowski would remain Bayern’s highest-paid player, according to them.

David Alaba himself will apparently also issue a statement soon. No club can afford Alaba at the moment: could he really leave Bayern on a free transfer next year?