David Alaba agrees 5-year contract with Real Madrid
Bayern Munich defender David Alaba is understood to have agreed a five-year contract with Real Madrid, bringing months of speculation about his future to an end.
The world of football has been engulfed in Super League talk for the past 48 hours, but now that the highly controversial competition is on the verge of collapse, Alaba's future has immediately
returned to the top of the transfer gossip columns.
Having been courted by a number of top European clubs - Manchester City, Barcelona and Chelsea included - Sky Germany report that the Austrian has agreed to join Real Madrid on a contract running until 2026, although nothing has been signed at this stage.
Sky sources: David Alaba has agreed a 5 year contract until 2026 with @realmadrid. Barcelona is not an option anymore. Contract not signed yet, but will be in the next weeks ??✅ #TransferUpdate @Sky_Torben @Sky_Marc pic.twitter.com/jo7DIVjO8g
— Max Bielefeld (@Sky_MaxB) April 20, 2021
Alaba has been long been expected to join Los Blancos, with the 28-year-old previously expressing a desire to leave Bayern at the end of the season in order to seek a new challenge, while he's also expressed an admiration for Real Madrid in the past.
If indeed he is off to the Spanish capital, Alaba will take with him bags of trophy winning experience - having won everything there is to win in Germany and in Europe, on numerous occasions.
A nine-time Bundesliga winner, Alaba has also won the Champions League in 2013 and 2020, as well as winning six DFB-Pokal titles, five DFL-Supercup trophies and two FIFA Club World Cups.
In terms of what he'll add to Real Madrid's squad, Alaba is as versatile as they come, excelling at world level in a number of different positions. A central midfielder by trade - a position he occupies for his national team Austria - he's spent the majority of his Bayern career playing at left back, while he's transitioned into a top class central defender for the past 18 months.
But it's those positional tweaks, as well as Bayern's complete domination of German football, that has led Alaba to seeking a fresh challenge.
In Spain, he'll be tasked with helping Zinedine Zidane's side regularly get the better of rivals Barcelona, and it appears he'll again be challenging for Champions League honours - now that Florentino Perez's Super League plans appear, at this admittedly early stage, to be going up in smoke.