Bayern has been Kimmich’s club for nearly a decade and he did not want the relationship to end any time soon.
As of this coming summer, Joshua Kimmich will have been a Bayern Munich player for 10 years. From breaking in to the first team under Pep Guardiola in 2015, to wearing the captain’s armband in both the Bundesliga and Champions League, Kimmich has been an integral part of the successes of the German Rekordmeister for the past decade. He has won a total of 20 different titles in his time at the club so far, and he’ll be hoping to add to more come the end of this season.
Although it took until after both Alphonso Davies and Jamal Musiala had agreed to new deals with Bayern of their own, Kimmich finally put pen to paper on a new contract that will keep him at Bayern through June 2029. The trio of players’ contracts were the sole focus of the past two transfer windows in addition to some of the personnel the club wound up bringing in for Vincent Kompany’s maiden season in charge taking over for current England manager Thomas Tuchel.
Of course, Kimmich is a player who has garnered heavy interest from clubs abroad, and there was certainly clubs lined up to try to sign him in the event that he did not re-up at Bayern — knowing full well that he could very well have left as a free agent in the summer.
In a recent appearance speaking on ZDF Sportstudio (transcribed via @iMiaSanMia), Bayern’s number 6 explained that his family is very happy in Munich and that, having spent a decade at Bayern, he could not envision any other club being able to give him what he already has. “When you’re playing at a club like FC Bayern, when you feel comfortable in Munich and you have kids and family there, then that’s absolutely a factor. But the club is of course also a factor. When you’ve been at Bayern for 10 years, then you notice that there aren’t many clubs in the world that can compete. There aren’t many clubs that make you say I want to go there to make another big step,” he explained when speaking about the decision to sign his contract extension.
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It is understood that Kimmich very much appreciated the long-term squad planning goals set forth by Kompany, Max Eberl, and Christoph Freund, and both Davies and Musiala signing their long-term deals before him really helped nudge him in the right direction. He has already won every possible trophy there is to win at Bayern, so the door was open to him leaving on a logical level, but he wants to continue his career where he has already spent the bulk of it.
For the future of Bayern’s squad, the optics from the outside looking in are positive with the way they are able to retain key members of the team and keep them happy. In today’s fast-moving and ever-changing transfer landscape, it is not an easy task at all to keep a solid squad assembled for more than just a few seasons.
