Borussia Dortmund confirm free transfer signing of Niklas Sule from Bayern Munich for next season

The giant centre-back will join ahead of the 2022/23 season

(Getty Images)

Borussia Dortmund have confirmed they will sign Niklas Sule on a free transfer, when his contract with rivals Bayern Munich expires in at the end of June.

The 26-year-old has been linked with Chelsea, among other sides, with the Bundesliga champions unable to agree an extension with him. Chairman Oliver Khan acknowledged toward the end of January that Sule was set to depart, saying “[talks] took a long time and we made him an offer. He didn’t accept that offer.”

Having joined Bayern in 2017 for €20m, Sule certainly paid back his fee in helping the Bavarians to silverware - he has won four league titles and the Champions League in 2020, coming off the bench after just 25 minutes in the final as Bayern beat PSG in Lisbon.

Now he will head to Dortmund on a four-year contract, the Signal Iduna Park club have announced, with incoming sporting director Sebastian Kehl saying: “Niklas has shown us in personal discussions that he is very interested in Borussia Dortmund. He has a lot of experience, calmness in the build-up game and the necessary physique to take the next step with us from the summer.”

Dortmund are the closest challengers to Bayern in the top flight in Germany, though a weekend defeat sees them nine points behind their big rivals. Sule’s decision to move from the Allianz Arena to BVB marks something of a reversal of a trend, then, particularly as he is very much in his prime.

Mario Gotze, Robert Lewandowski and Mats Hummels are a few of the players who opted to make the move in the opposite direction to Germany’s most dominant team - though Hummels later returned for Dortmund and remains in their team now, at age 33. Sule, at 26, is a far younger addition and a real coup for BVB.

That said, he has been in and out of the Bayern side for well over a year, having struggled to find his most consistently impressive form after a long-term knee injury in 2019/20.

Sule also has 37 caps for Germany and was part of the squad which won the 2017 Confederations Cup, appearing off the bench as a late sub in the final.