David Alaba’s leaked Real Madrid contract shows why Bayern Munich never could’ve kept him (Updated)

Der Spiegel is back doing what they do best, which is leaking football players’ contracts. This time, they put the details of David Alaba’s transfer to Real Madrid up for public scrutiny, and the numbers are honestly quite shocking. It’s no wonder why Bayern Munich couldn’t sign him to a contract extension.

Since the Spiegel article is behind a paywall, here’s @iMiaSanMia to our rescue with a quick summary of the facts.

Those wages are quite insane for any player — for a center back, they’re nothing short of astronomical. Alaba is likely the highest-paid defender in the world right now, which explains why Real Madrid decided to let Sergio Ramos and Raphael Varane go to accommodate the Austrian in their squad. Now, I get that Alaba is in his prime and he just won the sextuple, but isn’t that a little bit excessive? Oh well, if Madrid want to trash their wage structure for his sake, then it’s their prerogative.

Those fees to Alaba’s agent and his family are also quite obscene — no wonder Uli Hoeness lashed out at Pini Zahavi as a greedy piranha. Then again, getting Florentino Perez to fork out 20m a year after the season Alaba just had, probably deserves some kind of bonus.

In any case, these numbers prove why Alaba was never going to stick around at Bayern Munich. There’s no way the club would’ve acquiesced to those demands, especially in light of declining revenues due to the coronavirus pandemic. Of course, we wish Alaba all the best in his career, but this news definitely softens the emotional blow of his departure. If you believe Der Spiegel’s reporting, then Bayern never had a chance of keeping him in the first place.

Update

Just for some more context on this, according to Falk, Zahavi also asked Bayern for a similar commission fee (in case Alaba had extended):