Manchester United received a huge boost in their pursuit for defender Mats Hummels as Borussia Dortmund revealed that they will make a decision about his future in the summer.
Since last summer, United, who have been looking for a central defender since the departures of Nemanja Vidic and Rio Ferdinand, have been searching for a marquee signing in the defence.
While United did get Marcos Rojo, Daley Blind and Luke Shaw for the defence, none of the aforementioned are natural centre backs.
Hummels was, supposedly, United manager Louis Van Gaala s first choice in the position and the interest in the World Cup winner remains high. Earlier in the week, Hummels revealed that to further his career, he will look for a move away from Dortmund eventually.
Talking about that, Dortmund CEO Joachim Watzke revealed that the club held all the aces if he was to leave, but refused to rule out an exit nonetheless.
“In this moment, this a total dummy discussion, because there is no offer. If one arrives, we will discuss it internally and make a decision. But this decision will only be taken by BVB.
“The situation at Dortmund is like this: We’ve lost one major player each year, but we don’t stop playing football.
“To be clear: Mats knows his contractual situation, he described it in that interview himself. The decision where Mats will play next season will only be taken by BVB.”
Last year, Dortmund allowed Robert Lewandowski to run his contract down before he moved to rivals Bayern Munich. And with Hummels, the club are in a similar position with the Germana s contract set to expire in June 2017.
Yet, Watzke revealed that, he is not worried about a similar thing happening with Hummels.
“If we had sold Robert, we maybe would have gotten a 25 million. But we kept him and got a 50 million more. This is the same issue here.
“We’re not thinking on the short-term. You only do that if you need money and that is not the case with us.”
United, seemingly, have a good relationship with Dortmund when it comes to transfers and have conducted two deals with the club over the last three years with attacking midfielder Shinji Kagawa first moving to Old Trafford and then moving back to Die Borussen.