Image: GEPA pictures/ Witters/ Ulrich Hufnagel (GEPA pictures)
Coach Thomas Tuchel still has to wait for his New Year’s wishes to come true and has started training without the planned defensive reinforcements. The Austrian Bayern sports director Christoph Freund still wants to be active in the winter transfer market.
“We know that we have a need. We were pretty much at the last stretch in terms of personnel,” said Freund. Tuchel often had to improvise in defense and in the defensive midfield and was once again faced with a defensive bottleneck right at the start of the year. Central defender Minjae Kim will be active for South Korea at the Asian Cup in Qatar until February 10th at the latest, and full-back Noussair Mazraoui was called up by the Moroccan national coach for the Africa Cup of Nations (January 13th to February 11th) despite injury.
“Winter is not so easy”
But in Munich they know from experience: winter shopping is complicated, expensive and involves risks. “Winter is not that easy,” remarked Freund, once the architect of Salzburg’s successful team. “It is very difficult to get players in the middle of the season that we are 100 percent convinced of,” admitted Tuchel.
Arnau Martínez (20/FC Girona) and Clément Lenglet (28), who is on loan from FC Barcelona to Aston Villa, are considered candidates. Ronald Araújo (24) was considered the preferred candidate. However, the Uruguayan is still tied to FC Barcelona in the long term and is no longer considered a hot lead. Tuchel’s desire for a defensive-minded midfielder has, for the time being, slipped behind a defensive solution on the priority list.
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