The CEO of Borussia Dortmund, Hans-Joachim Watzke, says a breakdown in the relationship between Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and the Borussia Dortmund fans was a key factor in the Bundesliga side’s decision to sell the striker to Arsenal.
Watzke caveated his statement by admitting that Aubemeyang’s loyalty to Dortmund 18 months prior also played in his favour when the Gabon international came to push for a move.
The 29-year-old joined the Gunners in a deal worth €63 million on transfer deadline day and soon after took to social media to apologise for his behaviour in the build-up to his acrimonious exit.
In an opinionated interview with Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (cited on the Dortmund official website) Watzke outlined how the Aubameyang deal played out in the aftermath of teammate Ousmane Dembele’s summer switch to Barcelona and why Dortmund won’t be so accommodating in the future.
“He [Aubameyang] clearly told us that he would stay for the season, partly as a reaction to the departure of Dembélé,” said Watzke.
“But in his case, there was also the fact that he believed we should be grateful towards him because in 2016, when Hummels, Gündogan and Mkhitaryan all left, he declined some very lucrative offers and pledged himself to BVB. There’s an element of truth to that.
“We would have struggled if Auba had been part of the 2016 exodus. This was a feeling that resonated with us, too. And so, among other reasons, that’s why we ultimately did it.
“But above all, it was because we had the feeling things would never return to normal with Auba in the second half of the season.
“Not with the fans. Not with the team. Too much had broken down due to his behaviour. The sum of 64 million was not so high that we had to do it for financial reasons alone.
He added: “I have told the team in no uncertain terms that the next player to try something like that will fail miserably. He will have a huge problem.
“Stock-listed company or not: the next player who tries to put us under pressure by withholding performances or even striking will not get away with it and will be made to sit in the stands. They all know that now.
“That’s a public statement that I can measure myself with! Following Dembélé and Aubameyang, there is now an overriding interest in the club – we need to get a better structure into our squad again.”
He’s 28
How many more statements is this guy going to make? Christ, give it a rest and move on.
Harsh. Nothing wrong with pointing out he’s 28.
Until he turns 29
Agree 100%.
big if true
Big, yes. Statements about him being 28 until he turns 29 may be controversial and rub folks the wrong way, like our friend lessthanthesum, but I like to think us Gooners can debate issues like this without getting up each other’s noses, Phil Brown style.
Did they not get all uppity with us when we spok about “Auba” when he was their player…. well now they can fuck off and shut their holes.
I sort of feel for him. Glad we have the player but that sounds like a bad situation at Dortmund.
Yeah boo hoo, boo hoo. Welcome to modern day football. You’re bloody lucky you got another season and a half out of him when you decided to sell all your other good players in one window. You’re a selling club, often feeding your biggest rivals. No one knows more than Arsenal fans how frustrating that is. But at the end of the day, it’s your call so don’t whine after it’s happened. Seriously though, what is the point in this statement?
I don’t think you can be so condescending towards Dortmund with regards to calling them a “selling club”. The position they’re in is a bit unfair, the galactic empire I mean Bayern Munich come along every now and then and scoop up their best players. Not so long ago we were also selling our best year on year. Shit, we lost our “best” player this year to a rival and only salvaged the situation by taking two of Dortmunds best players of the recent past! Never forget we’re owned by Stan kroenke i guess is my point.
To help their fans cope with another huge loss to their squad. They also lost Mislintat, which is going to hurt bigtime. He’s the one who found all of Bayern’s best players…I mean Dortmund…;)
It’s always good to hear both sides of the story. A wise word from Phil Collins.
Wise words from Phil Collins?
Just because he’s a bad musician doesn’t mean he’s an idiot!
Found Peter Gabriel!
I thought the thing with Phil Collins (not being facetious here) was that he’s a great musician, but makes bad music because he’s a bit of an idiot?
Does every comment I make really have to be moderated? You’re worse than my girlfriend. At least she doesn’t tell me until after I’ve said it that I shouldn’t have said it.
Oh I see, only comments I make about said moderation are not prithy to the moderation process… This is like some weird Kafka-esque nightmare.
Welcome to Arsenal
It’s not us, it’s you.
I had a period of my comments going into moderation but after I deleted biscuits or something all was good. This may not be a conspiracy mate, I quite like your comments and I am an old prude! 🙂
biscuits is the best defensive midfielder in the world.
they could have spent the 250 millions they made on those deals yet they sold another top player and blamed it on previous departures, no man, Auba left because he saw no amibition in the way their club was ran. They almost make the kind of money City is spending on market if they had sporting priorities and spent that theyd be in a much better situation
No ambition in the way their club was ran, so he came to Arsenal. Read that statement to yourself, Thaigoon. Yeap…
Haha, exactly. Many have left us for exact same reasons
i think he was disillusioned at dortmund . he always said he will play for real madrid and will only leave for them, but they never came calling for him and so did no teams of similar stature. only arsenal came for him so he made do with whatver he had. trophy or no trophy atleast he can earn some darn money
Or maybe he really missed playing with his mate Mhki, and perhaps he’s only that good with someone like Mhki providing for him
Dude, he was leading the Bundesliga in goals before he left per the amount of games he started. He missed two to a red card and one or two others for disciplinary problems. I’m pretty sure Lewandowski is happy he’s gone to the premiership.
Club executives that care about the relationships of the fans with the players? A definitive statement on player deals? Germany’s a wacky place.
Meanwhile Germany is world champion.
Many parallels to the Auba/Alexis situations but only one club’s CEO spoke directly about the situation. Doesn’t really matter if he’s right or wrong here. Letting bad behaviour slide sets a bad precedent but being too authoritarian means more and more players run down their contracts and leave for free.
The important thing is to demonstrate you care about how losing a star player affects fans, manager and the club overall.
Looks like Pulisic is going to be the next on the line to leave. Quite a sad situation to be in. We have been there where players want to leave one after the other and we know how it feels. Dortmund are quite decent and not that detestable as a club.
Tup always liked them, simply because they managed to beat bayern to the title. Liked klopp when he was there with his style of football too. After klopp left i still dont have anything negative bout Dortmund. Now that theyve sold us auba i in fact have poaitive thoughts bout them. As for klopp.. now that hes in Liverpool, i like him less (cos i still remember the cup final where michael owen scored 2 quick goals and we lost).
At least klopp’s doing all he can to get back into my good books due to his stunning defence
Henchoz handball on the line when it was 1-0 still bugs me
There was also a Henchoz handball that the ref didn’t see.
Can relate to what he says cause for years we had players unsettled and pressing for moves too. Support his stance to tell the next unsettling player to f**k off. Time to grow some balls.
Provided we’re not in for him
????
Well, unless we have a shot at Pulicic.
Then all bets are off.
jw1
Same as Henry? Loved by the team and fans, loyal for most of his career but wanted to move on and we let him once he became too ‘big’ for the team. Though I hope Auba has more good years in him than Henry did when he left.
Arsenal needed the money on that one, we sold half the team at the time and replaced them with bunch of teenagers for a fraction of the income. Stadium budget and all those dark years…
You mean THESE dark years 🙂
Two record signings this season, 3 cups in 4 years.
What if Arsenal won the league and 5 seasons later ended up 17th (16th the season before)?
That’s what happened to me. So current times don’t seem very dark.
Sp*rs not won the league since 1961 with no prospects of winning it soon. 2 trophies in 36 years, one the league cup.
We are having a terrible time.
How the fuck wont you call these years dark years of Arsenal. Spuds were never winning league or play CL football to begin with why would you compare Arsenal to them??? We always knew theyre shit. You gotta be a masochism to enjoy these years, especially if youve been around since 90s
I don’t enjoy all of them, other than winning cups and getting players like Aubamayang, Ozil , Mkhit signing for us. Why can’t we take pleasure from stuff like that?
Or were we spoilt in the 90s and are just going through a natural cycle for most clubs, especially when they have spent their money on building a big new stadium. In that context we could have done far worse eg 16th then 17th in the league.
Wonder if Barcelona are comparing themselves to Espanyol or Real Madrid…
*28 years old
I’ve seen him referred to as 29 a number of times, strange…
Some people can’t count; get over it!
He’s 29 years old on 18th June, until then he’s 28.
Please, can we not start the entire conversation again?
No! You sit down and read it. (slams the door)
That’s right. One of the key takeaways from Arseblog News in the last month or so is that someone who is currently 28 will remain so until such time as their birthday, at which point they will become 29 years old.
Damn. That is also my sister’s birthday. I know what I will be buying her for birthday this year — Aubameyang’s number 14! And hope I will be happy buying it too, as he would have led us to a league cup and a top four finish in the league by then. Well, I got carried away, but I sure hope so. And hopefully Lacazette can fire us to the Europa. And maybe Ozil starts scoring goals as frequently as Bergkamp, because in every other way, he is as good as the Dutchman, if not better. Along with Mkhi, Ramsey,… Read more »
I have yet to write a welcome message here for Aubameyang.
Welcome son. I hope you surpass Thierry’s goalscoring record, win the CL here, and that we never arrive to the point of having to call you… Aubameyor.
What a relief Mate, thanks for finally writing your ‚welcome message’, i’m sure ‚the son’ read it.
Who writes quotes with a comma at the beginning? That’s kind of why they’re called ‘quotation marks’.
Quotation marks are preceded by a comma in many cases, but yes, Adam did use a preceding comma in the wrong way in his post.
Aubameyang reads these? Omg.
Moneybayang!
Sausagebayang!
Give me another minute, and I might be able to come up with another two-syllable word.
Aubameyingyang!
Obamawang!
O’Bambawham
Only took three hours, but I think I have another one:
Phoneboxbayang
P’tang yang kipperbang.
How about ShuthefuckupOyang?
How about You’retwosoddingdaystoolatetotellhimtoshutthefuckupohgreatCheesyBayang?
salty much?
Without mislintat they can’t just go sign another undercover star now so fair play.
Yup i promise i will not judge us for signing 18-23 year olds come end of this season. I shall give the lads at least 1 full season.
the same Dortmund that allowed Gotze to move a day before their finals against Bayern and there was no fuss about it.
Bit of the different situation as they had no choice on the Goetze transfer. Bayern offered the buy-out clause amount so they had no option to accept.
There was a fuss, but it was a buy-out clause. Nothing to be done about that really.
Goetze paid his own release clause (provided by Bayern) and Dortmund simply had no option but to terminate his contract come transfer market. Goetze was a cunt for doing so.
I don’t get the logic here. That’s how buy out clauses work. Why does that make Goetze a cunt (moreso that a club coming in to buy him for ‘not-the-buy-out-clause’)?
Leaving your team before the most important game in your clubs history FOR THE OPPONENT, just a day before the game, and the opponent happen to be your clubs historical native rival?
Thats the cuntiest transfer of history. No doubt.
Goetze 2013 is right up there as a top cunt right behind Hitler and Bill Cosby
I still don’t understand what buying out his contract has to do with the level of cuntishness involved, though. He could’ve been bought by Bayern in the summer and the outcome would’ve been the same – why would he somehow be a nicer guy if it was done that way? Are Lewandowski and Goretzka ok for agreeing to move to Bayern mid-season, without their clubs being able to receive a transfer fee?
Oh, they re-signed him, so the Dortmund fans don’t seem to be as bothered about it as you seem.
He was actually supposed to play in the match. Some cunt leaked the news to the press and fucked everything up.
I’m surprised the fans took him back after the huge uproar his leaving caused. People were bullying his little brother in school, burning his jersey, all types of horrible things. I watched his return debut and it was a mixed bag. He’s still not the same player he was due to the myopathy but he’s still quality if he’s surrounded by good players, he just can’t last an entire 90′ minutes without getting extremely gassed, and he’s still a good 10 pounds overweight.
He actually didn’t move until after the final and was supposed to play that day, but some idiot leaked it to the press a week or so before the game and people went crazy. The excuse Dortmund gave for Gotze not playing was because he had a dentist appointment a day before the game and hadn’t fully recovered. He was in the crowd to watch the final.
They’ve been read the Riot Act.
I have followed Dortmund and i think Auba has been classy throughout his tenure there. He deserved a new challenge because at 28-29 it’s his last big contract in his prime. Although i feel sad for Dortmund because i like them as a club i think Arsenal and Arsene would have handled the situation with some class. We never publicly come out on the player and i’m proud of that. Coming back to Auba i think he deserved the move because Dortmund were being unfair to him by letting a newcomer like Dembele leave before letting Auba go. Auba deserved… Read more »
Yeah, but is it 28 or 29 we need to know!
Where’s that tiny violin… ?
Players come and go, but not many clubs make €200m from the sale of 2 players though
So basically he just listed the e amples of the players he let go and the $ he got from them, and telling other clubs that they dont need money. So when the big boys come knocking for pulistic come end of season it’s gonna be crazy $ again.
Can so easily happen to us too. Highest paid (or thereabouts)…if things go sour, we will have issues. Have to get 4th spot or CL with europa. Its so important at this stage not to be just banking on the Europa. That would be a huge mistake. Chelsea are only 50 pts and we have a dozen plus games to go. Liverpool are not that far off either. The Chelsea ship is taking water, Liverpool are erratic. We have our own erratic issues. If we can resolve them, put on a strong run, we can haul them back. BUT FIRST,… Read more »
Your 500 word essay is incomplete
For a club that was nearly destroyed by financial mismanagement and had to have Bayern come in and rescue them they sure are uppity.
on Giroud… I don’t think he really cares. Its Chelsea. Not a big mistake for him. In fact a bit of a trojan horse on our part. Giroud just wants to play/feature and Chelsea also have CL. Its more for the Wcup squad. The 18 month contract is really a short spell till the summer. with one year left then, he will likely re-assess and be open to another move. What we are missing though is Giroud’s ability to afford us a different dimension. Not every team will be as charitable as Allardyce and Everton. Plus again, if I have… Read more »
How about we recall a certain Spaniard who has a hat trick to his name in Europe?
we can truly relate the feeling.
Wow what a shock…. Everyone knows what happened, it was just one of those things. It doesn’t just happen in football you know Hans.
It is nice to be on the other side of one of these situations for a change! Very excited about the team for the first time in a while…
If Auba’s “indiscipline” is what it took for us to land such a marveric player, I’d take it!
John Terry is a cunt.
Obviously, but the question remains. Is he indeed 28 years old?
No, John Terry is 56.
Lol they said the same thing when Dembele left, nobody else will be allowed to do this. They’ll fold next time just like they folded this time, and just like we folded with Sanchez. When push comes to shove there’s nothing you can do to make a player play for you if they don’t want to, and nobody is going to put them in the reserves to rot just to make a point. The team all know it too, the guy is just making a fool of himself spouting off like that.
Don’t make a fool of yourself. City did it to tevez and he ended up apologizing to the club.
City have a bottomless pit of money (don’t be fooled by their myopic fans that think they actually comply with FFP legally) and can afford to lose 10’s of millions on a player not working out (see all the players they flogged for peanuts in in the summer et al). It’s a different situation for a real club.
Not sure what this has to do with anything. City didn’t put Tevez in the reserves; he went on strike himself. Then when he finally decided he’d had enough they put him straight back in the team with just a token apology for the sake of the cameras. Not even City could afford to let him rot just to make a point. But Dortmund isn’t City, and we aren’t City. The proof is in the pudding. They said the exact same thing after Dembele left, then they folded with Auba. “This time we’re serious! Not like last time!” always sounds… Read more »
A lesson for Stan and Ivan to take note of. You can’t sell all your players and expect your top players to sign a contract when it is convenient for you.
Bottom line, happier players will sign. Unhappy players will demand huge wages. Do the math. And run the squad properly
I don’t believe this guy for a minute. The fans that were interviewed had different opinions. All of them said they loved Auba, some even said he deserved to go to Arsenal. One or two were hurt simply because their best player was leaving, which is understandable. If Watzke doesn’t want this to happen in the future then maybe he should stop selling Bayern all of his best players, it’s ridiculous. If you thought Arsenal was bad on that front, look no further then Dortmund.
But, if a Dortmund player wanted to improve his lot but remain in Germany then Bayern is really the only choice. When Bayern Munich call German players answer.