Bayern Munich has remained diligent and determined in their pursuit of Paris Saint-Germain winger, but acquiring the Dutchman’s signature is proving to be much more problematic than they might have originally thought.
Max Eberl, Christoph Freund, and the rest of Bayern’s front office were ready and willing to spend upwards of €90 million to bring Simons to Munich, but things have become more complicated since some of Bayern’s expected departures are now in a bit of a limbo. As former club president Uli Hoeness had spoken about last weekend, the club needs to make some more sales before more players come in to the club.
Bayern has already signed Hiroki Ito, Michael Olise, and João Palhinha, so they do need to offload players to be able to afford a transfer in the range of €90-€100 million to be able to balance the books. Matthijs de Ligt’s proposed move to Manchester United is now in jeopardy and it still remains unclear what other players might leave Bayern this summer at this point. Kingsley Coman, Joshua Kimmich, and Noussair Mazraoui have all been linked with potential departures in addition to De Ligt.
Now, per information from football transfer expert Fabrizio Romano, RB Leipzig is now growing increasingly confident that they will be able to beat Bayern to the punch for Simons. They are ready to initiate another loan deal with PSG to get the Dutch winger to Leipzig for another season and club CEO Oliver Mintzlaff is reportedly pushing for loan discussions to take place between PSG and Leipzig as soon as possible.
Per Romano, PSG is far more open to another loan move for Simons as opposed to a permanent sale to Bayern. They still have not yet found a player to at least partially replace the massive void left behind with Kylian Mbappe going to Real Madrid. For both Leipzig and PSG, a loan move suites them and Bayern is left out because of the fact they want to buy him on a permanent basis.
Currently, Simons’ contract at PSG runs through June 2027 and after January 2025, PSG no longer has to worry about PSV Eindhoven getting a cut of whatever transfer Simons might make after that point. If he was to transfer now, PSV would get a considerable fee from the move.
What is Kompany cooking? Are the Pep comparisons really warranted? We discuss all that and more — including parallels to another “Guardiola disciple” in Mikel Arteta — on the newest edition of our podcast! Listen to it below or on Spotify.