It didn’t quite work out at Bayern for the Dutchmen, but he’s now a Premier League champion at Liverpool.
Despite joining Bayern Munich from Ajax with plenty of promise and potential in the summer of 2022, Ryan Gravenberch’s tenure in Germany didn’t exactly pan out how he would’ve hoped, and likewise Bayern. However, he has flourished with Liverpool and will now be collecting a Premier League winner’s medal in a few weeks’ time having been a key piece of Arne Slot’s title-winning midfield that was, at one point not too long ago, pushing for a potential treble.
For Bayern technical director Marco Neppe was part of the efforts Bayern made to get Gravenberch from Ajax in the summer transfer window three years ago, and he recently reflected on the Dutchman’s time in Munich and how it’s gone a lot better in Liverpool. “I am super happy for Ryan. He is a special midfielder. When we signed him from Ajax, we were 100% convinced. And, honestly, we never doubted his qualities. We knew he would bring it someday. We saw exactly what he is now showing at Liverpool,” Neppe recently told Sky Sports (via @iMiaSanMia).
Unfortunately, when Gravenberch was with Bayern, he had a tough fight to try to get minutes amongst the likes of Joshua Kimmich, Leon Goretzka, Marcel Sabitzer, and even Aleksandar Pavlović as he started to break into the senior squad. When all was said and done, Gravenberch had made a total of 34 appearances across all competitions for the German Rekordmeister before making the move to the Premier League, having only tallied 1 goal and 1 assist from what were predominantly appearances off the bench.
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Realistically, the circumstances were never in Gravenberch’s favor at Bayern, as Neppe touched on. “Sometimes it is about needing some patience too. Even in his first season at Liverpool, it was not easy. It is a momentum thing. There are so many stories in football where big careers start because of an injury to another player and they take their chance,” Bayern’s former technical director stressed, continuing on to use Alphonso Davies of an example of the circumstantial sentiment. “Look at Alphonso Davies, the start of his career at Bayern was due to the fact that David Alaba and Lucas Hernández were injured at the same moment. He got his opportunity. But it is not luck. In the long run, these players will always show their level,” he emphasized.
If not for nothing, much like with the case for how well Désiré Doué has done at Paris Saint-Germain after Max Eberl really tried to push to get him to join Bayern, Gravenberch is perhaps an ode to Bayern’s eye for talent — the timing just was not perfect and the stars did not align. It is clear that they were able to pick out a genuine talent, but the circumstances at Liverpool were just far better for him when Jurgen Klopp integrated him into the squad, carrying in to this season that clinched league title number 20 for Liverpool.
