There’s one guy in German football you can’t escape – even if you don’t give a toss about the Bundesliga: Uli Hoeneß, legendary honorary president of FC Bayern München, makes headlines the moment he opens his mouth.
Right now, it’s the summer’s record-breaking transfer frenzy that’s got him fuming. We’re talking £7.22bn in men’s football alone, according to Fifa – a jump of more than 50% compared with the same period in 2024.
For Hoeneß this is crazy money flying around. On live TV, the Bayern boss-emeritus said: “It’s like Monopoly. Land on Schlossallee (Mayfair), then some sheikh turns up. The only reason Schlossallee isn’t in Bayern’s hands any more is because Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia and Qatar have joined the game – and against them, you don’t stand a chance.”
Side-note: It’s hard not to chuckle at his choice of Monopoly as an allegory – given his 21 months behind bars for tax evasion, the GO DIRECTLY TO JAIL card comes to mind…
“I was gobsmacked by what’s been happening in world football over the past six to eight weeks,” the 73-year-old said, calling the sky-high fees “completely gaga”. At some point, he warned, “ordinary people will just say: have they lost the plot?”
Well, if anyone lost out this summer, it was Germany’s record champion Bayern. They failed to land Florian Wirtz – who ended up at Liverpool – and Nick Woltemade, now at Newcastle.
Hoeneß insists the £130m quoted for Wirtz was a non-starter. As for Woltemade, he said, Bayern put £48m on the table, Stuttgart wanted £65m, and in the end Newcastle paid close to £78m. “With all due respect – he’s not worth 78 million,” sniffed Hoeneß, overlooking the eternal rule: market value is whatever someone else will pay.
And the sum English clubs splashed out in total this summer was more than £3bn on new players, a new record light-years ahead of Italy’s Serie A (roughly £1bn), the Bundesliga (£742m), La Liga (£591m) and Ligue 1 (£551m).
Still, Hoeneß is convinced the spending spree “can’t go on”. His advice to the Bundesliga: “We have to show strength and not take the money from the Arabs or American hedge funds,” the long-time Bayern boss said. “The most important word in this business is Nein,” he added, saying no to all this madness. And “at some point,” he predicted, “even the sheikhs will get fed up.”
You may call this sour grapes. Hoeneß, however, isn’t alone in his unease. Dortmund’s sporting director, Sebastian Kehl, also talks about “a very nerve-racking summer.” Transfers in the Bundesliga are generally a little easier, he says, but Dortmund had international ambitions. “With clubs that weren’t necessarily dependent on money. That changes the negotiating position dramatically.” The former BVB midfielder labelled the Premier League as “schmerzbefreit” – literally pain-free, but closer to fearless, shameless, utterly unfazed.
“They sometimes deliberately wait until the last phase of the transfer window”, Kehl said, “because they know that, thanks to their financial resources, they can calmly hope for a possible domino effect. So we had to be patient in order to be able to act.”
Even so, Kehl acquired Chelsea’s Carney Chukwuemeka and Fábio Silva (Wolves) for fees “completely out of line with the trend”. Silva, he says, is a really good striker with brilliant prospects. “And he won’t even be in the top 100 most expensive transfers worldwide this summer! Chukwuemeka will end up even further down the list. That shows how much money there is in the market.”
Woltemade, on the other hand, did make the top transfers – with a public shouting match as an added bonus: before the Newcastle deal, former Germany captain Lothar Matthäus had rated Woltemade between €80m and €100m, thus earning Hoeneß’s scorn. He called Matthäus nuts and accused him of deliberately driving up the price.
The World Cup winner shot back, suggesting that Hoeneß simply is out of touch with the market.
But the Bayern legend stood by his criticism: “Matthäus was wrong because Woltemade wasn’t bought by a normal club, but by an oil company in Saudi Arabia. He was lucky. What happened has nothing to do with normal football.”
After Sunday’s match against Northern Ireland in Cologne, though, Hoeneß might feel vindicated: Woltemade was hooked after 61 minutes, booed by the German fans.
Let’s see who wins the monopoly match after all.
