Bayern Munich have turned winning into a tradition, to the point where their success is taken for granted more than at any other club in world football.
One of the best-run organizations in professional sports, Bayern’s excellence has recently been called into question after a host of rash managerial decisions, poor signings, and dysfunctional executives.
But Bayern’s track record of success in the 2010s decade speaks for itself, and looking at their list of transfers over the last 15 years provides a clear example of why they achieved consistent Champions League success and perennial Bundesliga dominance.
Here are the 10 best transfers in Bayern Munich’s recent history since 2010, ranked in order.
10. Leon Goretzka, CM
Leon Goretzka helped lead Schalke to an unlikely second-placed finish behind Bayern Munich, and then Bayern, as they have traditionally done, plucked the best player from their main title competitor away for free.
After that transfer, Schalke were doomed to historical awfulness, and they have not been back in the Bundesliga since their relegation.
Goretzka, meanwhile, bulked up and played a pivotal role in Bayern Munich winning six titles in the fabled 2019/20 season. Although Goretzka’s stock has fallen hard since then, his free transfer is a huge success, given you can’t tell the story of that Champions League-winning side without him.
9. Alphonso Davies, LB
Hasan Salihamidzic did a lot wrong as a sporting director, but his ability to identify top young talent was unmatched in the Bundesliga, even putting Borussia Dortmund to shame.
One of his best finds was MLS attacker Alphonso Davies, who converted to left back to fill a gaping hole in the Bayern Munich side, allowing David Alaba to shine at center back under Hansi Flick.
Davies was the best left back in world football when Bayern Munich won the treble in the 2019/20 season, and although he has recently been criticized by the fans and media, he is still one of the best in his role. For 14 million euros? Bargain.
8. Kingsley Coman, LW
Kingsley Coman had never lost a league title until the 2023/24 season when an undefeated Bayer Leverkusen shocked Die Roten and the rest of world football.
It says something that Coman finally didn’t win a league title in a season in which he finally wasn’t a key part of Bayern Munich, as he only played 1,123 minutes.
As the wear and tear builds and Coman nears the age of 30, there’s a worry that the French winger may hit his decline phase sooner than Bayern would like.
But since arriving from Juventus in 2016, Coman has been a model of consistency and hard work on the left flank, doing Franck Ribery proud.
7. Serge Gnabry, FW
It is criminal that Bayern Munich only had to spend eight million euros in order to sign Serge Gnabry, thanks to a friendly clause in his contract with Werder Bremen.
Gnabry was one of the best players in the Bundesliga in Bremen, scoring 11 goals before having a strong follow-up campaign with Hoffenheim when Bayern loaned him to Dietmar Hopp’s side.
The versatile forward has himself been a magnet for criticism from the local press, like so many of his teammates, but he was also indispensable in Bayern’s treble triumph, scoring 12 goals and 10 assists in the league with 9 further goals in the Champions League that season.
6. Xabi Alonso, CM
Current Bayer Leverkusen manager Xabi Alonso is a dream target for Bayern Munich, who already had Alonso in their ranks during the mid-2010s in his final farewell to elite-level football.
A Champions League winner for both Liverpool and Real Madrid before joining the Bundesliga’s biggest club, and while he never won Europe’s biggest prize with Die Roten, he earned so much respect from German fans for his class on the ball.
Alonso averaged more than two key passes per game for Bayern in the 2015/16 Champions League campaign, and he scored some crazy goals in his three-season tenure with the club.
Like another former Real Madrid icon in Raul, Alonso didn’t spend much time as a player in the Bundesliga, but his impact was like someone who had spent a decade.
Alonso only cost Bayern Munich nine million euros to move to the Allianz Arena because of his age, and Die Roten definitely got their money’s worth.
5. Jerome Boateng, CB
Jerome Boateng formed the best center back partnership in world football with Mats Hummels, as the two won the World Cup together for Germany despite never hoisting the Champions League trophy – a title Hummels has still never won in his career despite making two finals with Dortmund (and none as a Bayern player).
As for Boateng, he arrived in Munich in the summer of 2011 alongside Schalke superstar Manuel Neuer as part of a new-look Bayern side that would continue to dominate the 2010s together.
Boateng was an elite ball-playing center back and highly intelligent in his reading of the game, moving from right back to center back and flourshing, just as contemporary Sergio Ramos did for Real Madrid.
In the end, however, Boateng’s time at Bayern ended in disgrace after he was found guilty of assaulting his partner, with other incidents coming to light that displayed a pattern of abuse.
4. Manuel Neuer, GK
The only thing that prevents Manuel Neuer from being ranked higher than fourth is the fact that everyone knew how good he was, Bayern had no competition to signing him, and the other players above him were bigger bargains than 30 million euros.
Still, 30 million euros for a keeper who was 25 years old and already world-class at the time is a steal no matter how you spell it, even if Schalke were crazy for losing a generational goalkeeper for a relatively modest price.
Neuer was already one of the best in the world at Schalke, but he would go on to become the greatest of all time at Bayern Munich, redefining the goalkeeper position with his unique quality on the ball.
He made so many stunning saves and has been a model of consistency in Bavaria, and he is still the starter for Die Roten now in 2024.
From 2013/14 to 2016/17, Neuer never had a save percentage below 80 percent in the Bundesliga, which is such a ridiculous peak of form.
3. Thiago Alcantara
Thiago Alcantara is one of the most uniquely great and underappreciated metronomic tempo-setters in midfield, providing elite defending on top of his technical dominance of the midfield.
Bayern Munich fans certainly appreciated Thiago, who was the beating heart of Hansi Flick’s Champions League-winning outfit and sorely missed when he left for a new challenge in the Premier League with Liverpool.
Thiago was worth the 25 million euros Bayern paid to Barcelona for him and then some, living up to his billing as Pep Guardiola’s protege.
The Spanish international consistently completed around 90 percent of his passes for Bayern Munich, even averaging as many as 4.6 interceptions per game in the Bundesliga.
Finding a midfielder like Thiago who could control the entire game and play center back-level defense for 25 million euros is just about impossible. This signing was as big of a bargain as Real Madrid signing Toni Kroos from Bayern for the same price, if not an even more impressive transfer.
2. Joshua Kimmich, RB
Joshua Kimmich won’t go down as being as big of a Bayern Munich legend as Manuel Neuer or Thiago Alcantara, but the center midfielder and right back was an even bigger transfer bargain at 8.5 million euros from VfB Stuttgart.
One of many great young players found by the RB Leipzig scouting team and Ralf Rangnick, Kimmich became the best right back in the world at Bayern before moving to the midfield under Hansi Flick and establishing himself as a world-class midfielder.
As much as Kimmich gets criticized for being being a real defensive midfielder, there’s a reason why he excelled under Flick and won the Champions league in a brilliant individual season.
If you know what Kimmich brings to the table with his intensity, technical quality, vision, work ethic, and defending in the tackle, then you can get the most out of him without magnifying his weaknesses.
Kimmich has been one of the best German players over the last handful of years and will go down in the history books at Bayern Munich all for under 10 million euros.
1. Robert Lewandowski, ST
Unless if Kylian Mbappe can prove otherwise, Robert Lewandowski is currently the greatest free agent transfer in history, as his move to Bayern Munich changed the complexion of the Bundesliga.
Before Lewandowski joined Bayern, Dortmund were the best team in German football. But after Bayern won the Champions League against Dortmund and then took away Lewandowski one year later, BVB never competed with Bayern again.
Since Lewa’s heyday at the club, Dortmund have not won the Bundesliga. Meanwhile, Lewandowski broke Gerd Muller’s previously unbreakable record of goals in a Bundesliga season, scored five goals in nine minutes, and won the treble in 2019/20.
Lewandowski may have always had a reputation of being a bit of a mercenary and left for Barcelona on bitter terms, but nobody can deny his consistency, quality, and success as one of the transfer bargains of the century for any club.
