Kane and Dier join Bayern

[cambridgeshire canary 6,735]

You'll never guess what happens next!

 

(Spoiler; Bayern turn into Spurs and don't win the league)

[K Lo 224]

Would be great to see Leverkusen with the Bundesliga. It's a team I've been following for about 20 years now. Rather cruelly named "Neverkusen" as they've been so very close to winning it but never have done yet.
 

[JonnyJonnyRowe 446]

32 minutes ago, K Lo said:

Would be great to see Leverkusen with the Bundesliga. It's a team I've been following for about 20 years now. Rather cruelly named "Neverkusen" as they've been so very close to winning it but never have done yet.

Hmmm, I'm not so keen, they are still owned by Bayer AG the multinational pharmaceutical company (hence the name)

Who knowingly released blood products for haemophiliacs which were infected with HIV and hepatitis C in the early 80s.

And didn't reach final financial settlements with non-US victims until 2009, by which point of course a hell of lot of them were long dead.

Bayer division 'knowingly sold' HIV-infected protein | World news | The Guardian

They are also 100% owners, having an exemption from the 50+1 rule. 

Edited February 18 by JonnyJonnyRowe

[K Lo 224]

19 minutes ago, JonnyJonnyRowe said:

Hmmm, I'm not so keen, they are still owned by Bayer AG the multinational pharmaceutical company (hence the name)

Who knowingly released blood products for haemophiliacs which were infected with HIV and hepatitis C in the early 80s.

And didn't reach final financial settlements with non-US victims until 2009, by which point of course a hell of lot of them were long dead.

Bayer division 'knowingly sold' HIV-infected protein | World news | The Guardian

They are also 100% owners, having an exemption from the 50+1 rule. 

If the football club had been complicit in that then I wouldn't wish them any success.

[......and Smith must score. 1,345]

52 minutes ago, JonnyJonnyRowe said:

Hmmm, I'm not so keen, they are still owned by Bayer AG the multinational pharmaceutical company (hence the name)

Who knowingly released blood products for haemophiliacs which were infected with HIV and hepatitis C in the early 80s

They had previous form with their murky dealings in WW2 which unsurprisingly doesn’t feature prominently in their history of the company.

Edited February 18 by ......and Smith must score.

[TheGunnShow 5,940]

Can say the same for VfL Wolfsburg then - they're a Volkswagen team. Also can say the same for what will become my local team, visa/work permit permitting in Carl Zeiss Jena.

And both at least have reputations of being genuine works teams, unlike RB Leipzig.

[GJL Mid-Norfolk Canary 1,768]

Kane only went to that farmers league because Levy wouldnt sell him to another English club. Once the novelty wears off, which if sounds like its beginning to, he'll soon be back in the Premier League

[JonnyJonnyRowe 446]

20 minutes ago, TheGunnShow said:

Can say the same for VfL Wolfsburg then - they're a Volkswagen team.

Well not really, because I don't think having to pay out of a couple of grand per dodgy vehicle in dieselgate is quite the same as knowingly providing patients with HIV infected blood products. 

Edited February 18 by JonnyJonnyRowe

[JonnyJonnyRowe 446]

2 minutes ago, GJL Mid-Norfolk Canary said:

Kane only went to that farmers league because Levy wouldnt sell him to another English club. Once the novelty wears off, which if sounds like its beginning to, he'll soon be back in the Premier League

I think he'll give it another season to try and lift a trophy if Tuchel is sacked.

Xabi Alonso will be poached and Leverkusen will lose a few of their best players.

[daly 504]

8 minutes ago, GJL Mid-Norfolk Canary said:

Kane only went to that farmers league because Levy wouldnt sell him to another English club. Once the novelty wears off, which if sounds like its beginning to, he'll soon be back in the Premier League

Hardly farmers league

German teams have won the European/ Champions league around 20 times at least

[canarydan23 4,060]

32 minutes ago, ......and Smith must score. said:

They had previous form with their murky dealings in WW2 which unsurprisingly doesn’t feature prominently in their history of the company.

Most of the big German companies have murky WW2 dealings; Audi enslaved thousands and worked them to death at Leitmeritz, Porsche, BMW and VW did similar in other camps, Allianz insured the murderous infrastructure at concentration camps, Siemens actually had a facility within Auschwitz in which slave labour was deployed.

[TheGunnShow 5,940]

11 minutes ago, JonnyJonnyRowe said:

Well not really, because I don't think having to pay out of a couple of grand per dodgy vehicle in dieselgate is quite the same as knowingly providing patients with HIV infected blood products. 

Still exceptions to the 50+1 rule, and as @canarydan23 said, you can go through most major German companies that were back to before World War Two and see considerable dealings with them. Not to mention that Volkswagen, which brings us back to Wolfsburg again, were founded by a N/azi organisation if you're playing that card. 

Incidentally, guess who was called in to design the "people's car"? Ferdinand Porsche.

[canarydan23 4,060]

2 minutes ago, TheGunnShow said:

Incidentally, guess who was called in to design the "people's car"? Ferdinand Porsche.

A vile man. Sold out his country and ancestry to align with the Nazis, a friend of Hitler and worked hundreds of prisoners to death in his Fallersleben factory. Actually spent a bit of time in jail for war crimes, not long enough though.

[GJL Mid-Norfolk Canary 1,768]

7 minutes ago, daly said:

Hardly farmers league

German teams have won the European/ Champions league around 20 times at least

Bayern, twice in the last 25 years, Dortmund 27 years ago

The Bundesliga is weak nowadays , the domestic players are of a reasonable standard however the foreign players it attarcts arent of the top drawer, Kane aside . The league will attract players from neighbouring/local countries such as  Switzerland ,Austria , Czech, Poland,Hungary etc but theyre not top class.

Their club's attitude to outside investment is all very noble but it results in a second rate 'farmers' league

[TheGunnShow 5,940]

9 minutes ago, canarydan23 said:

A vile man. Sold out his country and ancestry to align with the Nazis, a friend of Hitler and worked hundreds of prisoners to death in his Fallersleben factory. Actually spent a bit of time in jail for war crimes, not long enough though.

And Fallersleben is part of Wolfsburg.

[paddycanary 539]

I might be a bit hazy on the details but I think I remember a friend of mine from France saying that to this day in France, Renault are still regarded as the Nazi-collaborator car manufacturers whereas Citroen are remembered as resisting the Nazis as much as was reasonable given the times, e.g. sabotaging engines which seized up in Russia etc.

Seem to remember Ferdinand Porsche being mixed up somewhere in the story too.

[JonnyJonnyRowe 446]

2 hours ago, TheGunnShow said:

Still exceptions to the 50+1 rule, and as @canarydan23 said, you can go through most major German companies that were back to before World War Two and see considerable dealings with them. Not to mention that Volkswagen, which brings us back to Wolfsburg again, were founded by a N/azi organisation if you're playing that card. 

Incidentally, guess who was called in to design the "people's car"? Ferdinand Porsche.

Its not really something to play a game about as it is far too serious so I'm not 'playing a card'. 

4000 victims of the contaminated blood scandal in the UK of the 1970s through to early 1990s which Bayer were heavily implicated in had a 40+ year battle for compensation before they were finally awarded an interim payment of £100,000 in 2022, by which point many thousands of others had died of aids. 

Bayer have never apologised by the way, even after settling with US claimants in the early 2000s. 

30,000 people in the UK were given contaminated blood in the UK, and countless others would have contracted HIV and Hepatitis from those people. 

I'm not sure if I were playing some sort of Top Trumps game with you pointing out that Hugo Boss designed a few uniforms etc 100 years ago is really comparable with something that is very much present and in the now and was felt heavily in the UK, that £100,000 was an interim payment so is ongoing. Some of the victims still walk amongst us, many of them unfortunately do not, but their friends and relatives will do.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/oct/19/contaminated-blood-scandal-i-stopped-counting-how-many-friends-died

https://petition.parliament.uk/archived/petitions/177590

Bayer also bought out Monsanto, but their third world GMO scandals and their major contribution to the collapse of bee colonies is another topic altogether.

I'm just not going to be able to say "yay, come on Bayer and Monsanto, you can do it", if it were Dortmund I'd be cheering them from the rooftops. There's a few massive corporations which really leave a bad taste in my mouth, no pun intended but Nestle is another.

I suppose I could bring myself to be excited to an extent that in Xabi Alonso could come to the Prem and shake things up.

Edited February 18 by JonnyJonnyRowe

[Fen Canary 829]

2 hours ago, GJL Mid-Norfolk Canary said:

Bayern, twice in the last 25 years, Dortmund 27 years ago

The Bundesliga is weak nowadays , the domestic players are of a reasonable standard however the foreign players it attarcts arent of the top drawer, Kane aside . The league will attract players from neighbouring/local countries such as  Switzerland ,Austria , Czech, Poland,Hungary etc but theyre not top class.

Their club's attitude to outside investment is all very noble but it results in a second rate 'farmers' league

I’d much rather have that in England than the current setup. A properly run league with club ownership similar to Germany at the expense of a few top players would suit me down to the ground 

[Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm Flailing Tube Man 3,821]

2 hours ago, GJL Mid-Norfolk Canary said:

Bayern, twice in the last 25 years, Dortmund 27 years ago

The Bundesliga is weak nowadays , the domestic players are of a reasonable standard however the foreign players it attarcts arent of the top drawer, Kane aside . The league will attract players from neighbouring/local countries such as  Switzerland ,Austria , Czech, Poland,Hungary etc but theyre not top class.

Their club's attitude to outside investment is all very noble but it results in a second rate 'farmers' league

The Bundesliga is ranked fourth in Europe on the UEFA coefficient list, and is currently second this season behind Serie A.

The term 'farmer's league' has basically become another way of saying 'not the Premier League'.

[mastoola 183]

3 hours ago, TheGunnShow said:

Can say the same for VfL Wolfsburg then - they're a Volkswagen team. Also can say the same for what will become my local team, visa/work permit permitting in Carl Zeiss Jena.

And both at least have reputations of being genuine works teams, unlike RB Leipzig.

Volkswagen is a company that was started by the British

[TheGunnShow 5,940]

8 hours ago, mastoola said:

Volkswagen is a company that was started by the British

It wasn't, it was founded in 1937 by the German Labour Front and they used slave labour to produce vehicles during WW2. What you mean is the post-war revival of the company after the war as Wolfsburg was in the British zone.

[Commonsense 624]

10 hours ago, GJL Mid-Norfolk Canary said:

Bayern, twice in the last 25 years, Dortmund 27 years ago

The Bundesliga is weak nowadays , the domestic players are of a reasonable standard however the foreign players it attarcts arent of the top drawer, Kane aside . The league will attract players from neighbouring/local countries such as  Switzerland ,Austria , Czech, Poland,Hungary etc but theyre not top class.

Their club's attitude to outside investment is all very noble but it results in a second rate 'farmers' league

Nonsense. In no way is it a farmers league. Within Europe only the English and Spanish leagues are stronger. UEFA rankings have the German league on a par with Italy. Your terminology is a gross insult, but suggests you believe that the only way for leagues not to be ‘farmers’ is for clubs to be owned by multi billionaires or petro states.

[Google Bot 3,278]

 

This Sixth Form political history lesson is sponsored by Google Search.

 

Edited February 19 by Google Bot

[canarydan23 4,060]

42 minutes ago, Commonsense said:

Nonsense. In no way is it a farmers league. Within Europe only the English and Spanish leagues are stronger. UEFA rankings have the German league on a par with Italy. Your terminology is a gross insult, but suggests you believe that the only way for leagues not to be ‘farmers’ is for clubs to be owned by multi billionaires or petro states.

I don't really think the PinkUn is the place to go for takes on football outside of England. There's a thread at the moment where people are genuinely positing that Rangers and Celtic would be mid to lower Championship teams. I hate Rangers, but it's the same Rangers that go to the Europa League final, getting passed Borussia Dortmund over two legs. Incidentally, they also go further than Barcelona  who were knocked out by eventual champions Eintracht Frankfurt, from an apparent farmer's league.

[Old Shuck 183]

Talk in various outlets this morning claiming Kane is "unhappy" at Bayern and would consider a return to the Premier League.

The cynic in me wonders if he felt a year abroad was the only way he'd get to play in England again as Levy wouldn't sell him to another PL club.

So-year away, hopefully win something (or not) then get his move to Man Utd/Man City/Chelsea etc.

Bayern would, the stories claim, probably accept their initial outlay back.

As he's on a longish contract, I doubt that and the whole story.

However, if they are thinking of a rebuild and a new coach, Kane is a whole lot of cash for them.

Their form in the Bundesliga this season has been poor-but then they pretty much scraped the title on the last day last season I think, so this was coming.

[dylanisabaddog 4,931]

Bayern have beaten Manchester United twice this season. OK, United aren't what they once were but not many English teams will beat them twice this season. 

 

[dylanisabaddog 4,931]

37 minutes ago, Old Shuck said:

Talk in various outlets this morning claiming Kane is "unhappy" at Bayern and would consider a return to the Premier League.

The cynic in me wonders if he felt a year abroad was the only way he'd get to play in England again as Levy wouldn't sell him to another PL club.

So-year away, hopefully win something (or not) then get his move to Man Utd/Man City/Chelsea etc.

Bayern would, the stories claim, probably accept their initial outlay back.

As he's on a longish contract, I doubt that and the whole story.

However, if they are thinking of a rebuild and a new coach, Kane is a whole lot of cash for them.

Their form in the Bundesliga this season has been poor-but then they pretty much scraped the title on the last day last season I think, so this was coming.

Kane will be 31 by the start of next season so any fee paid will never be recouped. He may well seek a return but I can't see any big English club paying a huge amount for him,particularly in these FFP times. Bayern have learned one of life's valuable lessons. Never do business with Daniel Levy. 

[Grumpy Old Man 3]

15 hours ago, TheGunnShow said:

Can say the same for VfL Wolfsburg then - they're a Volkswagen team. Also can say the same for what will become my local team, visa/work permit permitting in Carl Zeiss Jena.

And both at least have reputations of being genuine works teams, unlike RB Leipzig.

Most large established German companies have, to a greater or lesser, murky pasts. Most have also paid reparations of some sort AFAIK.

Trivia: FWIW, Carl Zeiss in Jena made fabulous binoculars. I've two pairs.

 

[Commonsense 624]

1 hour ago, Old Shuck said:

Talk in various outlets this morning claiming Kane is "unhappy" at Bayern and would consider a return to the Premier League.

The cynic in me wonders if he felt a year abroad was the only way he'd get to play in England again as Levy wouldn't sell him to another PL club.

So-year away, hopefully win something (or not) then get his move to Man Utd/Man City/Chelsea etc.

Bayern would, the stories claim, probably accept their initial outlay back.

As he's on a longish contract, I doubt that and the whole story.

However, if they are thinking of a rebuild and a new coach, Kane is a whole lot of cash for them.

Their form in the Bundesliga this season has been poor-but then they pretty much scraped the title on the last day last season I think, so this was coming.

Their problem is Tuchel as manager. Bin him for someone decent and the improvement will come.

[mastoola 183]

14 hours ago, TheGunnShow said:

It wasn't, it was founded in 1937 by the German Labour Front and they used slave labour to produce vehicles during WW2. What you mean is the post-war revival of the company after the war as Wolfsburg was in the British zone.

Yes you are right .  I ment to put restarted!!   lol