For a long time during the summer transfer window, especially after it became clear Florian Wirtz would be transferring to Liverpool from Bayer Leverkusen instead of Bayern Munich, it was understood that
Nick Woltemade would likely be joining the German Rekordmeister from VfB Stuttgart. There was constant back and forth between the two clubs in the negotiations and it became increasingly difficult to make any sort of progression as Stuttgart were not exactly fond of the idea of offloading their key striker to a Bundesliga rival. They had already lost Serhou Guirassy to Borussia Dortmund and didn’t want to have the same thing happening again, even though Woltemade had made it clear he was heavily interested in making the step up to Bayern.
In the end, Woltemade wound up joining Newcastle United in the Premier League instead of Bayern for a fee of roughly €85m plus performance-based add-ons. The Geordie club were a bit more able to spend that kind of money on the striker, and for Stuttgart, they didn’t wind up selling him to a direct Bundesliga rival — it was a win win for the Swabians in that regard.
In the Premier League, Woltemade doesn’t often play against his Germany compatriots, but he’s been in solid form for the national team in World Cup qualifying, where Julian Nagelsmann’s squads are routinely made up of a heavy Bayern contingent. Bild am Sonntag recently captured the striker talking about interacting with Bayern players at the German national team camps, and he said that there’s no bad blood despite the fact that he was, for all intents and purposes, supposed to be a Bayern signing.
“When I arrived at the national team, everyone congratulated me. Bayern players also congratulated me. When they see a player taking a step forward, you get congratulations. That was the case for me too. There were no negative comments, especially since my circumstances were special, Woltemade explained (via @iMiaSanMia).
From the Bayern perspective, even though everything was tailor made for Woltemade to come to the Bundesliga champions, it’s hard to argue with the way the season has started for Vincent Kompany’s side. They’re attack is spearheaded by the electric Harry Kane, who keeps setting different scoring records on what seems like a regular basis, and they have shown zero signs of slowing down their scoring rates. They still haven’t even welcomed Jamal Musiala back into the squad, as he is close to making his return from a long injury layover.
Hindsight is 20/20, but it is tough to say if Woltemade would have hit the ground running at Bayern as well as he has at Newcastle. At Bayern, he’d be playing second fiddle to Kane, but he has been a regular starter at Newcastle since they lost Alexander Isak to Liverpool and Callum Wilson to West Ham United.
