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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
In the end, Woltemade wound up joining Newcastle United in the Premier League instead of Bayern for a fee of roughly \u20ac85m 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\u2019t wind up selling him to a direct Bundesliga rival \u2014 it was a win win for the Swabians in that regard.<\/p>\n
In the Premier League, Woltemade doesn\u2019t often play against his Germany compatriots, but he\u2019s been in solid form for the national team in World Cup qualifying, where Julian Nagelsmann\u2019s 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\u2019s no bad blood despite the fact that he was, for all intents and purposes, supposed to be a Bayern signing.<\/p>\n