Schalke beat Manchester City to sign Holger Badstuber on loan from Bayern Munich
Tuesday 10 January 2017 18:28, UK
Schalke have agreed to sign Holger Badstuber on loan for the rest of the season after Bayern Munich said the defender would not be sold.
Schalke were reportedly competing with Manchester City and Swansea to sign the Germany defender and they said a deal had been done on Tuesday, pending the completion of a medical.
Pep Guardiola said he was interested in adding Badstuber to his defensive options if he became available and Swansea were linked with him after Paul Clement left Bayern to take over as Swansea manager.
Earlier, speaking from Bayern's winter training camp in Doha, Bayern boss Carlo Ancelotti said any move away from Munich would not be permanent.
"I said if he decided to leave because he wanted to play we can deal with it for six months," said the Italian.
"We can speak about this with him. There is no chance he will be sold. The idea of the club is to renew the contract. If he wants to go to play it will be to go on loan."
The 27-year-old has played just 28 minutes for the Bundesliga leaders since October, sitting out their last six league games, and has made it clear he wants more matches.
Badstuber has fallen out of favour under Ancelotti after suffering numerous injuries in the last four years, including back-to-back knee injuries.
He won the last of his 31 caps for Germany in March 2015, but is Bayern's fourth-choice centre-back in their star-studded squad behind Mats Hummels, Jerome Boateng, who is currently injured, and Javi Martinez.
"Holger deserves to play. He's been injured so often but now he's physically fit again and would like to play more games," said Bayern chairman Karl-Heinz Rummenigge.
"That's why he asked us to allow him to go out on loan to Schalke, and we gladly agreed. We hope Holger will get plenty of minutes under his belt in the coming months."
