BFW roundtable: Who of Lionel Messi or N’Golo Kante would we rather see for Bayern Munich? Find out here!

While we will likely never see either Lionel Messi or N’Golo Kante at Bayern Munich, one of our writers, cough cough, Tom Adams, suggested that Kante would be a better signing than Messi in the BFW slack channel. As if not shocking enough, another agreed with him! Therefore, we thought choosing between if we would rather see Messi or Kante, in a hypothetical situation, would be a fun roundtable idea amongst writers. Of course, this is all hypothetical as there is definitely zero chance, at least of a Messi signing given his recent PSG transfer…

Chuck Smith

I can’t believe Tom chose N’Golo Kante. It’s UNFATHOMABLE (big word bonus points)! If Tom was not completely awesome as the Twitter Meister (seriously...he is the best there is...BAR NONE!), I would have demoted him to running the BFW MySpace account, but come one...this tweet:

I respect N’Golo Kante and think he is great, but give me Joshua Kimmich any day. If Bayern Munich had the choice between Kante and Lionel Messi, I’d take Lionel Messi all day, every day. I mean, we are talking about the GOAT. Messi singlehandedly kept a pretty average FC Barcelona roster relevant for at least the last five years. As the club made bad acquisition after bad acquisition, Messi was ALWAYS there to clean up the mess.

Sorry Tom Boy, off to Friendster for you!

Fergus25

Kante is one of the best defensive midfielders in the world. Messi is the greatest player of all time. While Joshua Kimmich can create a strong argument for being better than the Frenchman, simply no one one on Bayern’s team comes close to the magisterially magnificent Argentine. Messi would slot right in to this Bayern team, and a partnership with Thomas Muller and Robert Lewandowski would be a joy to behold. Meanwhile, Kante barely makes it into a champagne XI — given Bayern’s dominating style of play, and requirement of a box to box mid meaning Kimmich and Kante would not work that well in my opinion.

RLD

Pass on both. I want Yusuf Demir. Messi left Barca because he was afraid the young Kampfer will eclipse him.

Schnitzel

I think there is only one right answer here: Messi. Sure, Kante is a great DM, but we’re talking about Messi here, quite possibly the greatest player of all time. He can play as a winger, as an attacking midfielder or even help us from the 8 position. Just imagine him teaming with Müller and feeding Lewandowski. How can you possibly pick Kante over him? Kante is 30 and we already have the Kimmetzka midfield pairing, so Kante could only play when one of them is benched, or if Mueller is moved to the wing (what blasphemy!) so it’s a very easy decision for me. MLM would be such an incredible trio. Can definitely expect 130+ g+a from them season after season. Sure, Kante can get the job done as a DM, but I feel like the reduction in quality in other positions would just not be worth it. Messi on the other hand would play instead of Sane or Coman and we would feel absolutely nothing, lol.

JTobolt

I mean, I don’t know. Both would look really good in the red of Bayern. But, what does Bayern become...Bay€rn? There is no way we get either nonetheless for free. I mean that’s a chunk o’ change for that right there. So Bayern would just...well you get the point.

Though to echo the sentiment’s of the Boss Chuck, Messi is the straight up GOAT. I mean good grief, Lewandowski and Messi. Just give us the Champions League and Ballon d’Or as a two-for-one combo at that point. Add in super-saiyan Kimmich and ain’t nobody beating that team. A man can dream, eh?

Marcus Iredahl

N’Golo Kante. Nothing is interesting about Messi the person. How come a guy who grew to idolize Diego Armando Maradona came to be so ruthlessly boring? On the pitch he is arguably the best of all time, off the pitch there’s nothing that adds to his ‘‘holy status’’ within the football world. The only thing respectable about him was that he stayed true to the club that helped him as a child. That ended after a pubic crying session and a first-class trip on a private jet to Paris.

Nah, I don’t want those personalities at Bayern. Give me the ever-smiling Frenchmen. The guy who is so selfless in his style of play, that no one noticed how good he was until Sir Alex mentioned it on live television. Give me the guy who is known to be the nicest and most humble professionals out there. Give me N’Golo Kante.

Tom Adams

Admittedly, when I spawned that Kante/Messi tweet a few days ago, I was on the back end of listening to debates about how drastically the landscape of the transfer market has changed. More specifically, the endless wealth that the Qatari and Emirati takeovers have brought both Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester City. Messi is one of the greatest players of all time, and in my opinion, is always going to get the nod in the Ronaldo/Messi debate. Additionally, he’s the best player to wear the Barca kit, in my opinion.

Where this argument stemmed from was more the financial morality and principles of what separates a big club like Bayern, and say, for the sake of the argument, City or PSG. For lack of a better explanation, in addition to Barca’s financial troubles, one of the only reasons he went to Paris is because they were the only ones that could afford to pay him his wages. The current climate in the Catalans is unstable and a deal was not able to materialize to keep him in La Liga. Can the play himself ask for a salary cut to play elsewhere? Could he have foregone a salary for a certain period of time to have stayed with Barca, as ridiculous as that might sound?

For me, what it boiled down to was the financial landscape and the side effects it’s synonymous with. In the Bundesliga, we’re all familiar with 50+1, proper fan culture, and a league that is working class-centric. The allure of inflated wages, television money, marketing rights, and everything that comes with big superstars might be appealing to the average viewer, but it takes away from what makes the Bundesliga so wholesome. I equated a player like Kante when thinking about things on a holistic level. Yes, Messi is one of the greatest players of all time, but what would Messi coming to Bayern do to the Bundesliga collectively? Would we see the wage structure completely change, would there quickly become more “customers” than “supporters?” Would the Bundesliga’s appeal fizzle drastically when he eventually left?

To me, Kante embodies Bayern DNA; incredible work ethic, selflessness, a team first attitude, and valuable experience. While it might just be an entirely hypothetically discussion, I would much rather have a player like Kante come to Bayern than Messi for all of those reasons. A lasting experiment to sort of illustrate everything would be to look at Bayern’s transfer fees from the past 10 years and look at their overall success and then compare it with wage structures of big superstars like Messi to see how much it would conflate the finances at our club. Would we be able to legally balance our books if he splashed a record fee for Messi and signed him on for a net salary of €25 million per year? Nobody at Bayern makes over €20 per year right now. Perhaps if Messi was to agree to a serious wage cut, I’d be willing to reconsider my stance, but the evidence doesn’t seem to suggest he’d be willing to do so without discrediting his character whatsoever.

So...what do you think? Tell us in the comments below! And don’t forget to tell us why!