Time to update the thread title. right
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Absolutely delighted about this news. As nerve wrecking and partly dissapointing following the developments for some of the established players are, as exciting is the look on the massive amount of young talent we collect at the moment: Dembele, Pulisic, Passlack, Merino and Weigl are some of the finest talents on their respective positions and there is even more waiting in a youth academy, which by now has at least caught in (if not even overtaken) Schalke´s "Knappenschmiede" as the best academy in Western Germany.
The price tag of 15 Mi. € seems tiny compared to deals of talents of a similar calibre, but there are IMO several factors which influenced that:
- There are expected to be several performance based bonus payments, which is a system I can completely get behind as most of goals are very ambitious, meaning that accomplishing these goals makes the increased money very well spent.
- We intensively scouted Dembele for a long time (even before he made his professional debut) and kept in touch with his camp all the time. We might have very well been the biggest interested club when we first contacted him. This and the good all around package we could offer him probably made him so determined to join us and turn down financially more lucrative offers (which makes him the newest in a very long list of players who made the same call).
- Rennes could have drawn out this whole procedere more than they did and at least squeeze out a few more millions or even take the risk of blocking the transfer alltogether. Here it was probably the often mentioned Pinault conncection between the clubs which made the transfer smoother and less expensive.
Overall just a damn fine job by our scouting team and head officials, especially the (amongst Dortmund supporter) often times criminally underrated DoF Michael Zorc. The guy is not only our biggest club legend but also one of the best managers in the business.