Bayer Leverkusen CEO Fernando Carro has confirmed that Bayern Munich had their eyes on Florian Wirtz ahead of the 2025 summer transfer window. But Carro made it clear he had no intention of selling one of his top players to a direct rival.
According to Carro, Bayern made their move earlier this year.
"Yeah, it was in the spring," he told Welt am Sonntag. "Jan-Christian Dreesen reached out to me. He said he and Karl-Heinz Rummenigge wanted to talk about Florian Wirtz."
Carro didn’t waste any time shutting that down.
"I told them we’re not interested in selling our best players to Munich. And that was the end of it there were no further talks. Bayern seemed pretty confident Florian would choose them, but I told them, 'We’ve heard something different.'"
In the end, Wirtz made a big-money move to Liverpool for €125 million, becoming the most expensive signing in both the club’s history and Premier League history. And for Carro, that was the best-case scenario seeing Wirtz go abroad rather than strengthening Bayern.
"When Florian and his family told us they picked Liverpool, we weren’t upset at all. Honestly, we’ve always preferred seeing our players move abroad rather than to Munich," Carro added.
