When one openly declares the integrations of promising young players to be a priority, eyebrows are raised when promising young players are sold. That was the case at Bayern Munich during the summer of 2024, as the likes of Mathys Tel, Adam Aznou and Paul Wanner permanently left the club, and these decisions saw board member for sport Max Eberl put under intense scrutiny. Asked about the departure of these three players in an interview with Berlin news site 11Freunde, as captured by @iMiaSanMia, Eberl looked to explain why they were let go:
“FC Bayern must aim to become champions and go far in the Champions League every year. It is Vincent’s wish to develop talent, but we have to make a selection. We cannot have top players in every part of the team – plus four or five young players. Because then it is very likely that the experienced players will be used in close and important matches. We therefore deliberately focused on Lennart Karl, Wisdom Mike, both 17, and 16-year-old Cassiano Kiala as young players in the first team because we believe they have the greatest development potential.”
Of course, Tel’s situation, given he had already been part of the squad for multiple years, was different to either Aznou or Wanner. Eberl had a different reason for letting him go: “Mathys Tel had already been at Bayern for a while but never quite made the breakthrough with us. Now we were able to generate significant transfer revenue, and that is why we made this decision.”
It sounds as if Eberl felt he could only have a select number of youngsters in the squad and that Karl and the others were chosen ahead of the sold trio. Of course, it is not nearly that simple, considering that there were multiple reports of Wanner and Aznou being unhappy at the club and prioritizing a move. Nor are the aforementioned trio of Mike, Karl or Kiala truly first team players. Only Karl can lay a claim to that distinction, while the others still gather most of their minutes for the Bavarians’ youth teams.
Was Eberl right to choose the German trio over the sold players? Could Bayern have kept one or two more youth players in the squad for the season? It is tough to tell, but these are the hard decisions a sporting director must make. Let us hope that this was a decision for the better.
