Bayern Munich are locked in talks with Manchester City over Leroy Sané, according to the Daily Record, and have already been given permission to speak to the player’s representatives about his contract in Bavaria. Bayern, who will lose both Arjen Robben and Franck Ribéry this summer, are seeking youth and creativity, and Sané – who started only 21 of City’s 38 top-flight matches this season, and four of 10 in the Champions League – has overtaken Lille’s Nicolas Pépé to be seen as their ideal recruit. What’s more, as the Record explains, “Sané has rejected a series of offers to upgrade and extend a contract that expires in the summer of 2021”, while “the young German is unhappy with his status in Pep Guardiola’s squad and has come into conflict with the Catalan coach on more than one occasion”.
That might clear the way for Manchester United to move for Pépé, a long-term target, while some bloke on TalkSport has said of Kalidou Koulibaly that “I’ve heard that him coming to United is very close”. Meanwhile the Mirror suggests that Manchester United will hand £12m to Alexis Sánchez next season just to make sure he doesn’t play for them, with the club resigned to paying half of his wages in order to convince any other club – with a loan move to Inter Milan considered the most likely outcome – to take him off their hands. In other wildly-overpaid-player news, £350,000-a-week Mesut Özil is in no hurry to leave north London – “I’ve got two more years on my contract and I am proud to be at this club and really happy here. I don’t think there is any chance of me leaving” – while £600,000-a-week Gareth Bale “doesn’t fancy returning to Spurs”, according to the Mirror, but might end up at Paris St-Germain.
Sánchez will just be the start of United’s clear-out, though, with Ole Gunnar Solskjær telling the squad after their 2-0 home defeat to Cardiff on the last day of the season that he was prepared to get rid of half of them, because of their dismal attitude. “Despite an initial lift under Solskjaer,” writes the Sun, “the atmosphere by the end of the season was understood to be worse than before José Mourinho was sacked in December.”
The Portuguese newspaper A Bola says that Moussa Marega, the 28-year-old forward who has scored 21 goals in 45 games for Porto this season, is “on his way to England” and that “West Ham must be his destination”. A fee of €40m is mooted. Meanwhile Antoine Griezmann has told Atlético Madrid that he intends to leave this summer, with Barcelona his likely destination as soon as they stump up his £108m release fee. Rodri is likely to follow him out of the Wanda Metropolitano, with Manchester City and Bayern Munich both considering the defensive midfielder’s €70m release fee reasonable.
Meanwhile in transfers-that-won’t-happen news we head to Bournemouth, where Eddie Howe says he would prefer to lose Ryan Fraser for nothing when his contract expires next summer than to sell him for a tidy sum this year. “Ryan is probably more valuable to us on the pitch than the money we could ever get on a sale,” he says. Chelsea might come to a similar conclusion with Eden Hazard, suggests the Sun, with their transfer ban leaving them more reluctant to sell for £100m than to get nothing when he leaves in a year.