Talked too much when intoxicated
Leverkusen boss withdraws “price tag” for Wirtz
April 21, 2024, 8:19 a.m
Florian Wirtz is one of Bayer Leverkusen’s masterminds. The 20-year-old is correspondingly sought after on the transfer market. Managing director Fernando Carro flirted with a specific transfer fee in interviews, but is now backtracking. His reasoning seems logical.
Managing director Fernando Carro of the new German soccer champions Bayer Leverkusen has retracted his “price tag” statement about national player Florian Wirtz. “I made a mistake there. Florian Wirtz actually doesn’t have a price tag,” Carro told ZDF’s “Sportstudio”. “I made a mistake again,” admitted the 59-year-old. During the week after the championship, he did a few interviews in Spanish on the radio in the rush. “And I probably talked too much.”
He also explained his statements by saying that he was influenced by the Spanish culture, where it is stipulated by law that all players must have a release clause. “Normally, if I were in Spain, I would say two billion or one billion. These are the clauses that FC Barcelona or Real Madrid have.”
Carro, the son of Spanish parents, gave several interviews to Spanish media after winning the championship, which caused a stir. He told the sports newspaper “AS” that Bayer would “probably make a big sale” in the summer in order to finance two or three new signings. At “Radio Marca” he mentioned, among other things, a transfer fee of at least 150 million euros that interested clubs would have to shell out for super talent Wirtz.
Leverkusen announces player departures
In fact, the club is striving to keep Wirtz for as long as possible, emphasized Carro and added: “If no player wants to leave, we would like to keep everyone.” The 20-year-old’s contract runs until 2027. “All Bayer Leverkusen fans, everyone who works there, are happy to have a Florian Wirtz like him in the team. So he doesn’t have a price tag.”
At the same time, the managing director confirmed that Leverkusen would be releasing players in the summer. “We would like to keep everyone after such a successful season,” said Carro. But you are a club that has to support itself. “We don’t have to make a profit, but we can’t make a loss either. We are always dependent on transfers,” he emphasized, recalling the lucrative transfers of Kai Havertz to Chelsea FC or Leon Bailey and Moussa Diaby to Aston Villa. However, the billion-dollar Bayer Group reliably compensates for the Werkself’s losses, which many see as a massive competitive advantage.
A completely new challenge awaits Bayer in the 2024/25 season, said Carro: “Getting up is easier than staying up.” Nevertheless, he now sees the club in an unprecedented position in contract negotiations. “I can remember conversations with players who wanted to leave because they wanted to win titles. They can no longer use that argument,” said the Leverkusen club boss.