Schalke signed Mladen Kristajic and Ailton from Werder Bremen for the next season. Both are free transfers. Not even a week ago Werder expected to extend the contracts of both of them.
wow! that's kinda wild, especially coming with bremen on top and schalke struggling - i know ailton has had some scrapes with management in the past, but i thought they were all ironed out... guess not
Not a bad move by Schalke (now they just need to find at least another 8 new players ), but of course i am dissapointed as Werder is the closest thing to a favorite Bundesliga team i have. I expected Aílton to leave every moment since he joined Bremen, but i am surprised that he signed for another BL team and not in Spain, Portugal or South America.
I love the Bundesliga but I find these midseason transfer announcements very odd. Do other leagues have the same thing? I know that in most North American sports, when players find out they are leaving one team for another, they never play another game for the team they are leaving.
I think that he already is under contract at Bremen for the next season (and if that's the case i think it would be a mistake to sell him. They would get some money, but would loose many key players after this season).
He's upset with the sale of the players and says "we don't have ambition". Schalke is a possible destination, but of course I'm hoping Bayer.
That’s what Micoud said today: “I don’t know yet if I’m staying. It hurts to lose two top players like Ailton and Kristajic. I came here to play for the top - if it’s Werder’s aim to play for rank 10 in the future, then I got to think about the situation.” I think he’ll stay though. Ailton + Kristajic have a combined salary volume of about 4-5 M and this sum allows to get good replacements. They have solid forwards with Charisteas, Klasnic and Haedo-Valdez, but they’ll need a new no.1 forward, of course. Kristajic might be replaced by moving Baumann back to the defence again, but this would be a step back. They found Ismael as pretty cheap defender in France before the season and their France connection might also be the key for new players. The reason for Kristajic to leave is that he gets a contract until 2009, while Werder offered until 2008 ‘only’ and didn’t want to provide him with an option for a further year. Ailton reportedly will earn 4 M per season, too much for Werder