Buli News Roundup: More Frings and Klose, more Transfer Stories

By: Jan | July 11th, 2007

Miroslav Klose has done a good job keeping us entertained during the off-season so far. Some of the praise has to go to Torsten Frings as well, who started a little verbal exchange between the two players right in time for some important Euro 2008 qualifying matches. Things seemed to have cooled down once Miro finally arrived in Bavaria. He gets along with his new team mates, more and more forgets about the old ones, updated his hair style again and happily scores unimportant goals in unimportant matches against hobbyist teams while preparing for the new season. He had almost moved on with his live. Luckily we can still count on Torsten to send some farewell messages in Miro’s direction. “Miro said he wanted to move to one of the best five clubs in Europe, and now he has ended up in Munich,” he said and he’s right. And as far as I can remember, Miro is the first player who ever changed his mind. “Our fans will whistle him,” predicts Frings. “He has done too much wrong in Bremen.” That qualifies as stating the obvious as well I think. At the moment I’m not really sure whether Frings is smart, angry or jealous. Werder Bremen and Bayern Munich will play against each other on the 21st of July in the Premiere League Cup quarter-final. Makes this match all the more interesting. Then the two teams face off again on matchday 2 and Frings and Klose also have to play together again in the national team. The coming weeks should be quite entertaining.

Miroslav Klose skeptical over Torsten Frings

Roque Santa Cruz has finished his advertising tour in South America. His team was dumped from the Copa America by Mexico (6-0) but he scored a couple of goals and a couple of European clubs took notice. Mission accomplished. Following clubs from Turkey and Italy, there are now two English teams interested in his service as well. Namely Sven’s Manchester City and the Blackburn Rovers. All Uli Hoeneß is asking for are €5m, but with so many potential buyers he might even squeeze some extra Euros out of the deal.

Werder Bremen are close to presenting their first big summer signing. His name is Carlos Alberto and the transfer fee is around €7,5m to €8m making him the most expensive transfer in the club’s history. They successfully outbid Hamburg, whose only chance was to get him through a loan deal. Alberto currently plays for Fluminense Rio de Janeiro but is owned by Corinthians Sao Paulo, who themselves had been taken over by the almighty Media Sports Investment group - short MSI. That’s the same MSI behind the odd Tevez to West Ham deal. That’s the same MSI behind the odd Nilmar transfer from Lyon to Corinthians. That’s the same MSI Klaus Allofs seems to be talking to again about a possible transfer of Nilmar to Bremen. At least that’s the latest rumour. Another transfer story that was rather short lived was the one about a possible move of Milan Baros to either Werder Bremen or Hamburg. The same two clubs who were already after Alberto and who exchanged some not so nice words in the process. Two bad we don’t get any more of that because Milan really wants to stay with Lyon.

Schalke does what Schalke has to do and what Schalke does best, and that is producing unrest within the squad or within the club’s management or vice versa. Kevin Kuranyi was the first to kick off proceedings when he decided to tell the press how he feels about Schalke’s lack of high profile transfers so far. This prompted a response from Schalke officials like sporting director Andreas Müller or president Schnusenberg reminding him, that his job is to play football and that their job is to run the club. Andreas Müller seems to be still in the process of (not so) secretly negotiating with Stephen Appiah, whose transfer had failed due to his excessive salary demands.

VfB Stuttgart have been quite successful getting rid of their substitute strikers. Marco Streller had already left the club to join FC Basel and now Jon Dahl Tomasson joins the Spanish side FC Villareal who decided to buy him for around €1m. That’s not much but Stuttgart also no longer needs to pay his hefty €4m yearly salary. That should free up some resources in their budgeting. Now they only need to get rid of Danijel Ljuboja and they cleaned up their squad. Fernando Meira recently announced that he very much would like to stay in Stuttgart so the Juve deal his hopefully off the table. Meanwhile we can add two more potential strikers to the list of Stuttgart transfer targets: Ciprian Marica (loan deal) and OSC Lille player Odemwingie. The Ewerthon deal could be alive again as well. It seems that Real Saragossa no longer demands €10m for him but would instead let him go for as much or as little as €6m.

Hertha BSC Berlin has one of the biggest youth academies in Germany and already successfully integrated some homegrown young talent into their squad. Most prominently the Boateng brothers Kevin-Prince and Jerome. Kevin, the older of the two had already been negotiating with FC Sevilla but it seems that Tottenham has put a last minute offer on the table which basically doubles Sevilla’s bid. Berlin could earn as much as €8m now. Jerome, the younger brother, is linked with Hamburg who are willing to pay between €1,5 to €2m for his transfer.