Borussia Dortmund remain adamant Haaland not for sale, ‘planning with’ him for the season

Borussia Dortmund begin preseason training next week, and one of the players expected to show up as normal is Erling Braut Haaland. And not only is he expected to show up, he’s expected to be there for the whole season. Sorry, Chelsea Twitter.

That’s the word anyway from BVB sporting director Michael Zorc, who may not really be able to say anything else in this situation regardless of what may or may not be happening behind the scenes, but that doesn’t mean these aren’t his actual intentions.

“Nothing has changed. We are planning with Erling for the new season!”

-Michael Zorc; source: BILD

Bild’s story claims that Haaland himself is happy enough to stay, though does ponder what Dortmund might do if Chelsea submit an “immoral” bid in the region of €175m (£150m). That number comes from the various rumor fantasies floating around, and would be more than twice the €75m release clause Haaland supposedly will have next summer (provided his contract doesn’t change before then).

BVB have shown in the past that they are willing to hold on to players at a financial detriment to themselves (Jadon Sancho the latest example after joining Manchester United at a 25 per cent discount from last summer, though Robert Lewandowski’s free transfer to Bayern Munich comes to mind even more so), so just because Haaland is likely to leave for much less in twelve months, that may not motivate them as much as we’d like to believe.

With preseason getting underway at Chelsea as well, it’s time to put up or shut up. Then again, the window is open until the end of August, so we’ve probably got many more weeks of this to go, giving us hope of a Havertz-like resolution at the end.