The most drawn-out saga of the summer might soon be over. Local paper Wolfsburger Allgemeine Zeitung reported Wednesday night that Kevin De Bruyne will be sold to Manchester City for €74 million, plus add-ons worth another €6 million. Those figures would make it a record for a Bundesliga player and one of the most expensive in the Premier League as well.
Assuming the deal goes through (De Bruyne's agent has said it is not final yet), it will be interesting to see how the departure of Germany's 2014-15 Player of the Year will be dressed up by Germany's cup winners after insisting (until recently) that no "official offers" had come in for the Belgian international. (It turns out they were being somewhat economical with the truth, as intermediaries had been negotiating on behalf of both clubs for weeks.)
Wolfsburg sporting director Klaus Allofs might argue that the latest and reportedly final offer from Eastlands was simply too high to refuse, or that the player's head had been turned. De Bruyne's recent performances had indeed been substandard, but making a deal this late in the window still will call the club's judgment into question.
The bosses at parent company Volkswagen will not enjoy losing their talisman ahead of what will be only their second Champions League campaign. And what good will all the money in the bank do the financially powerful club from Lower Saxony if players of a similar calibre can be signed only in January and the team have crashed out in the group stage already?
Wolfsburg could have tried to run down the clock, hoping that De Bruyne would rediscover his form after Sept. 1, and sweetened his extended stay by doubling his wages to €10 million, even if for only one more year. (Earlier hopes of a contract renewal had apparently subsided over the course of the summer.)
De Bruyne's professionalism -- he'd been unwilling to exercise the infamous "player power" you read so much about, telling his agent that he'd be happy with staying, moving to City or to Bayern Munich -- would have tempted Wolfsburg to go down that route, but they must have worried that continued speculation throughout the autumn would have an adverse effect on both De Bruyne and the team.
Short of getting the 24-year-old to sign a new deal, Wolfsburg's preferred option was to engineer a delayed move with Bayern as takers. The Bavarians denied being "active" earlier this week, but they were certainly active to some extent at the end of last week, when meetings with De Bruyne's agent took place in Cologne. Sources in Belgium suggested personal terms were even agreed in principle.
The German champions had long earmarked "KDB" as a natural long-term successor to Arjen Robben and Franck Ribéry, and a big bid had already been planned for next summer. Bayern also has an edge due to the presence of VW boss Martin Winterkorn on their advisory board; Audi, a subsidiary of the Wolfsburg-based car makers, owns 9 percent of Bayern's shares.
VW are heavily invested in German football and would probably have preferred the player staying in the Bundesliga, even at the expense of their club, but Bayern were ultimately unsure whether they wanted to pay top dollar for goods that would arrive in 12 months' time. What would have happened if De Bruyne ruptured his cruciate in the meantime? Wolfsburg's "B for Bayern backup plan" (said Sport-Bild) carried a huge risk that would have only been partially offset by a possible player part-exchange. That De Bruyne is a Nike player also made the deal slightly more convoluted. Bayern are an Adidas club; they, too, own 9 percent of shares in the club.
Yet another alternative might have been an option to buy later at a fixed price, but then again, Wolfsburg didn't benefit from selling such an option right now. And with each decent game by Bayern's new winger, Douglas Costa, the case for a heavy outlay for De Bruyne appeared less pressing at Säbener Strasse.
In the end, City will get a superbly talented, all-action player who comes with the strong intent of proving his former Chelsea coach, Jose Mourinho, wrong. De Bruyne will nearly quadruple his wages and play for the favourites to win the championship in England. For that, he will be trading in the security of being the first name on the team sheet for Wolves. Time will tell if one of the most complex transactions in recent years will prove good business for City, too.