I hope he gets sold to Hoffenheim or even loaned back another year. Being a week in and week out starter at Hoffenheim is much preferred to spot starts behind Upamecano and Sule at Bayern.
yeah I'd love for FCD to get a huge sum from Richards, but large sell ons are a catch 22 sometimes in the way they handicap the likelihood of a sale
If West Ham was serious enough they would have bought him. I don't think Long is high up in any EPL's list.
And yet Hoffenheim in all likelihood won't buy Richards either due to the circumstance installed by FCD of the huge sell-on clause. By your same logic Hoffenheim would make it happen if they were serious enough. The prospective selling club(s) preferences don't matter.
I think FCD has realized that the high sell on was a mistake. It impairs a player moving at all so it might as well be 0%. I notice they didn't do that in the Reynolds sweepstakes. They also learned the folly of trusting a club to park a player for 6-12 months with Cannon. Hopefully the training wheels are off now and they have an idea of how to proceed better in the future with the Reynolds deal the template.
Very different situations, though, as nobody would have offered close to what they got for Reynolds. They would have had to hold on to Richards in order to go that route, and who knows what his thoughts were in that equation. For Cannon, they didn't have much choice either. They HAD to move him, and options were likely limited. As much as this is a case of the training wheels coming off for FC Dallas, hopefully it's even more true that the market has opened up for more options/competition.
We will see. As mentioned, Reynolds was sold as a 1st team player. The measuring stick will be when they try to sell Che to Bayern Munich - which I think will happen. Also, remember that this isn't just a issue of selling a player to Bayern. FCD and Bayern have a partnership agreement. It needs to be a bit of a 2-way street
The sell on % is not an issue or a real barrier to sale. This is Bayern. They operate differently than most clubs, and will absolutely prioritize things like what's right for Richards and FC Dallas over a few million. Remember, this is a club that could have bought James Rodriguez on a low option from Real Madrid a couple years ago and flipped him for an instant profit, but refused to do so under the premise that players are not commodities. They had repeated offers over the option price and James was on their bench. Bayern paid $1M for Richards; there's not a big number on their balance sheet they have to offset. The decision will be simple: they will keep Richards if they think he can contribute and they will deal him the instant they think he can't. If he asks to leave, they will almost certainly honor it. The sell on % isn't likely to play a role with Bayern. Richards' issue is if they think he's valuable to them as a backup. Even if Hoffenheim were to offer some absurd price -- like $20M that they may not have -- the difference between the $19M profit and $11M profit is not the decision maker for a club like Bayern. (Hoffenheim's record transfer is $15M and $9M for a central defender). At something like $10M, you're looking at $9M versus $5M... again, this is not how Bayern Munich makes decisions on a player like Richards.
I'm not sure. A player that gets transferred for a pittance, like Richards, but with loads of unrealized potential, will likely have a higher sell-on percentage. Reynolds didn't get transferred for a pittance. His fee was pretty handsome to begin with, so his sell-on percentage will be lower. Whatever BM gets for Chris in a transfer, regardless of FCD's sell-on fee, is still going to be a handsome profit. I don't see it as an impediment to a Richards transfer at all. If BM wanted to lower the sell-on fee, they only needed to pay a little more upfront. This is really just structuring cashflows, pay more now, potentially lose less later; pay less now, potentially lose more later. Depends upon how you see the development of the player, determines which approach you might prefer.
I’m catching up on the discussion here so I might’ve missed this mentioned above. But it has been confirmed that Boateng will not be returning to Bayern next season. https://www.kicker.de/801691/artike...etigt-boateng-wird-durch-das-grosse-tor-gehen
Chris Richards has been performing performing in the top 5% of Bundesliga centre-backs for recoveries, tackles & interceptions since joining Hoffenheim. He has been superb on the ball too 🇺🇸 #USMNTShould he stay there again next season or take his chances back at Bayern? pic.twitter.com/kijg7qKUbx— Chris Smith (@Chris_SXI) April 11, 2021
Hoffenheim play at home v Leverkusen today at 2:30 PM eastern. Hoffenheim are 12th in the table, having lost three in a row. Leverkusen are 6th and need a win to keep pace with Dortmund for the Europa League spot.
I don't really trust defensive stats, at least as they're presented these days. Here are a couple prominent CBs: (They're Virgil van Dijk and Kalidou Koulibaly, respectively.) Not that that means anything re: Richards, just an observation.
He was fine. So much for the high flyin' Hoffenheim from when he first got there though. Doesn't allow him to ping the ball around like he's used to. Awesome watching him slug it out though.
"American youngster Chris Richards helped Hoffenheim keep Bayer Leverkusen at bay in the Matchday 28 curtain-closer on Monday."
I think he did okay. His confidence seems a little lower compared to his first 2-3 games. It felt like his CB counterparts made more defensive plays than he did although that could be more so because their attacks came down the opposite side more often. Although my opinion doesn’t really matter if he starts the rest of the season, and learns from his mistakes then it’s all thumbs up from us. I’m not disappointed by his recent performance, it’s more of what I expected for a young CB making his first debut season. His amazing performance in his first few games was not what I expected.
That's the only way I can conceive of Richards being sold - due to Bayern's ongoing relationship with FCD. Maybe Bayern says if he's not a legit regular for us we'll sell him while you reap a large chunk of the profit, provided you steer the likes of Che & Pepi to us over the competition in the future. A team w/out that long-term relationship isn't doing it.