If Max Eberl weren’t such a laid-back guy, you’d think he was a nerd. The sports director of Borussia Mönchengladbach has usually already done his homework before the others even take out the notebooks, and if the others are still grappling with the current learning material, he is usually already one lesson further. However, Eberl agrees that “done!” to call when he’s finished first. Then he’s just finished and usually relaxed again.
In his own way, Max Streberl has become a style-forming manager who can do a lot more than just buy players. What he’s particularly good at is selling players. For example, he has given Xhaka, Hazard and Vestergaard each clearly via tariff and has found talented successors for a much lower fee.
For Gladbach’s manager Eberl, this is a worst-case scenario
In this way, his Borussia has become not only successful, but also reasonably wealthy, and now the news comes that Max Eberl is losing national players Matthias Ginter and Denis Zakaria without taking a single cent for them.
The Ginter / Zakaria case shows everything you need to know about the corona transfer market. The transfer market has become abysmal and mean in the pandemic, it is now even tormenting its best. Max Eberl did everything right under the old rules, but suddenly everything is wrong under the new rules. Ginter and Zakaria once came to Gladbach for a bargain 17 and 12 million respectively and were the perfect candidates to sell them to the British at excessive rates – but because they have contracts until 2022, this should have happened in the summer of 2021 according to industry logic.
In the summer of 2021, however, the European transfer market was stuck in quarantine, and only those clubs that had been tested by their emirates or oligarchs were able to act. There was simply no offer for Ginter and Zakaria because the potentially interested clubs had to save – and in order to extend their contracts, the Gladbachers again lacked the money.
Ginter / Süle / Rüdiger: The complete DFB defense will be launched in the summer
In summer, Ginter and Zakaria will leave the farm for free, which is the worst-case scenario for Eberl. But the manager is of course smart enough to know that he is not alone in this scenario. If the nerd wanted, he could replace defender Ginter with other free defenders, in the Bundesliga alone the contracts of defenders Zagadou (Dortmund), Stark (Hertha), Friedrich, Knoche (Union), Kempf (Stuttgart) and Pieper (Bielefeld).
Just like Gladbach, almost everyone is doing in the pandemic, including FC Bayern, which is also facing a Ginter fate: The appointment with Niklas Süle also ends in the summer, and although they could afford it, the people of Munich shy away from them in times of the pandemic Investing in a new contract. Incidentally, Bayern is aware that Antonio Rüdiger’s contract with Chelsea is also running out. The German national team defense Ginter / Süle / Rüdiger will be launched completely in the summer.
In fact, Corona is likely to produce more free transfer players than there has been in any summer before. And in this case, too, the virus has the potential to divide a society – into (a few) superstars such as Mbappé, Pogba or Dembélé, who will enjoy their freedom of transfer and cash out shameless cash; in (some) top players like Süle, Ginter, Rüdiger or Zakaria, who should still get good clubs and good cash; and in (many) average professionals for whom “free transfer” could mean the new “unemployed”.