Borussia Dortmund have officially confirmed that they’ve reached an agreement with Niklas Sule over a free transfer when his contract with Bayern Munich expires at the end of the season.
The 26-year-old centre-back seemed set to leave the Allianz Arena for a long time. Chelsea had reportedly expressed an interest in his services first back in April, while SportBild claimed in November that his representatives had held preliminary talks with Newcastle, and that he would be interested in the project starting to unfold at St. James Park.
However, Sule is now obviously set to remain in Germany. Dortmund’s need for defensive reinforcements has become glaringly obvious following the 2-5 defeat at home at the hands of Bayer Leverkusen. Having failed thus to take advantage of Bayern dropping points against RB Leipzig on Saturday to close the gap at the top of the Bundesliga table, they obviously chose the right moment to announce the signing of Sule in order to reduce the level of anger within their fanbase.
Borussia Dortmund has signed Niklas Süle for the 2022/23 season ✍️ pic.twitter.com/WC7EeffRXj
— Borussia Dortmund (@BlackYellow) February 7, 2022
Chelsea will certainly have seen this development as a blow, with one high-quality defender that was supposed to be in the market in the summer now taken. Bayern lost David Alaba last summer on a free transfer and now they’re about to lose Sule as well, but Chelsea are in that boat with no less three defenders – Antonio Rudiger, Andreas Christensen and Cesar Azpilicueta, all rather prominent in the team under Thomas Tuchel.
Sule joined Bayern from TSG Hoffenheim in 2017. He’s made a total of 159 appearances for the Bavarians, helping them win the Bundesliga in all four seasons since, as well as two DFB-Pokal trophies, and the 2020 Champions League followed by the UEFA Super Cup and the FIFA Club World Cup.
He has 37 caps as a Germany international to his name.
