Newcastle United beat Bayern Munich to the transfer of Nick Woltemade last summer
Nick Woltemade celebrates scoring against West Ham
Newcastle United's Nick Woltemade celebrates scoring against West Ham
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Bayern Munich's honorary president Uli Hoeness has launched a scathing rant at club legend Lothar Matthaus, accusing him of derailing their bid to sign Nick Woltemade from Stuttgart last summer.
Woltemade was hot property in German football having won the top scorer award at the European under-21 Championships, fresh off scoring 17 goals for Stuttgart last season.
The 24-year-old had looked set to join the Bavaria outfit until Stuttgart put a price tag on him Bayern were not prepared to pay. It was a price Newcastle United were willing to pay, though, with the Magpies securing his arrival for £69million at the end of the transfer window.
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Matthaus, who played for Bayern for 12 years across two spells at the club, is a prominent pundit on German television and suggested Woltemade's price tag should have been between €60 and €80million, which was beyond what Bayern had budgeted to pay for the former Werder Bremen youngster.
And that has caused Hoeness to launch an extraordinary attack on the German legend, suggesting he was responsible for the collapse of the transfer that would have taken Woltemade to the Allianz Arena.
"Matthäus's comment about Woltemade was clear," Hoeness told Der Spiegel.
"'I'll tell you one thing - we would have signed him for €50 million, and I'm sure we could have pulled it off. But then Matthäus goes and says in the paper that the player is definitely worth between €60 and €80million.
"[They could no longer] sell him for 55, because they would have come under such pressure that they would have been too stupid to carry out what Matthäus, as a so-called expert, was trumpeting to the world.
"He doesn't have to exploit his position to keep hurting FC Bayern."
Lothar Matthäus TV Expert looks on
German football legend Lothar Matthaus(Image: Jurgen Fromme - firo sportphoto/Getty Images)
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Woltemade endured a mixed first season at Newcastle, scoring 11 goals in 51 appearances, although nine of those came in the first half of the season.
Having hit the ground running up front in the first half of the season, the goals dried up in the second half of the season, although that coincided with Woltemade being used as a midfielder in February and March.
The Germany international ended the season playing in a number 10 role and it will be interesting to see if that remains the case when he returns to pre-season after playing for his country in this summer's World Cup.