A legal dispute between two player agents is likely to lead to spicy revelations. Timo Werner allegedly had already signed with FC Bayern.
National striker Timo Werner should in 2019 according to the Spiegel allegedly – “reluctantly” – to have signed a contract with Bayern Munich in order to transfer to the record champions in summer 2020 free of charge. That emerges from documents from a legal dispute between the two consultants Karlheinz Förster and Murat Lokurlu, who the Spiegel are present. With Niklas Süle, a current Bayern professional is also involved in the case. It is also about a false affidavit.
The quoted in a detailed report Spiegel from various documents from a lawsuit that will soon be heard at the regional court in Mosbach near Heilbronn. The well-known player advisor and former world-class player Förster (63) is said to accuse the sports agency owner Lokurlu (45) of withholding legitimate income from Werner’s first professional contract with VfB Stuttgart in the 2014/15 season. It’s about over 660,000 euros.
Lokurlu throws Forester loudly Spiegel for his part, to withhold his share of commissions from various other player agencies. The court must now clarify how long and in what relationship the two have worked together in advising players. To support his claims, Lokurlu submitted hundreds of pages of evidence, including negotiations with players and clubs and WhatsApp chat histories, according to the news magazine.
According to Lokurlu’s lawyer, these should allegedly prove, among other things, that his client negotiated a change for Werner in February 2019 – his contract in Leipzig ran until 2020 – with Liverpool FC: The Reds should therefore have an annual salary of twelve million euros and over 25 Millions of euros in bonus payments, plus a whopping twelve million euros in commission for the consultants.
Did Timo Werner secretly sign with Bayern Munich?
A little later, however, Förster, who was officially acting as an advisor to Timo Werner at the time, informed RB Leipzig about the negotiations and convinced Werner to sign a contract with Bayern. So it says in the documents. “At the plaintiff’s insistence – the player was not too enthusiastic about it – Timo Werner had already signed a fixed-term contract with Bayern Munich …”.
After Werner learned that his engagement with Bayern’s sports director Hasan Salihamidzic and the then coach Niko Kovac had not met with much approval, the national striker Förster had “vehemently” asked to dissolve the contract with the record champions, which then happened. Werner extended at RB Leipzig. After another year in Leipzig, Werner is said to have negotiated with several top English clubs – via Förster and Lokurlu – and finally signed with Chelsea.
At the request of Goal and SPOX FC Bayern did not want to comment on the matter yet, Karlheinz Förster could not be reached. Of the Spiegel quotes Förster’s lawyer as saying that his “client basically does not urge his customers to sign contracts”. Werner finally moved to Chelsea in summer 2020, where he won the Champions League last season.
Consultant dispute in court: false statement by Niklas Süle?
Bavaria’s central defender Niklas Süle is also involved in the legal dispute between Förster and Lokurlu. According to Spiegel, he signed an affidavit in February 2019, according to which he was represented by Förster alone from 2013 to 2020. “I had absolutely no business contacts with Lokurlu,” the magazine quotes from the statement.
In return, however, the latter claims that Süle had “let himself be persuaded” to make a “false affidavit”. The WhatsApp conversation logs between Süle and Lokurlu should prove.
In October 2019, after Bayern’s 7-2 win in the Champions League against Tottenham Hotspur, Süle said he wanted to switch to Spurs. Süle Lokurlu emphasized that he definitely wanted to move to England.
Compared to the Spiegel Sulle reported through a lawyer that the conversations were of a “purely informal nature”. There was no contract with Lokurlu, he “never received any compensation.”
Nevertheless, as the files of the trial are supposed to prove, the defender is now threatened with a criminal complaint because of “his intentional false affidavit”. However, according to the magazine, submitting a false affidavit is not a criminal offense, as Süle is only heard as a witness in the civil proceedings.
The two national players Werner and Süle have now changed their advisors and are being looked after by the Sports360 agency.
I have been working in the news industry for over 6 years, first as a reporter and now as an editor. I have covered politics extensively, and my work has appeared in major newspapers and online news outlets around the world. In addition to my writing, I also contribute regularly to 24 Hours World.
