FCB confident captain will extend stay

Mark van Bommel’s contract with Bayern expires on 30 June this year, but the 31-year-old Netherlands enforcer has yet to decide whether to extend his stay at the Säbener Strasse. “Bayern have made me an offer, which I’m considering at the moment. I have time until the end of January, and I’m going to use it,” the club captain announced at the Dubai training camp on Tuesday.

Van Bommel is basically minded to stay, he explained. “I feel very settled at Bayern and would be delighted to extend my deal, but not unconditionally.” Bayern have offered an extension for one year, but Van Bommel would clearly have preferred a longer timeframe. “I’m fit and sense I can easily hold my own in the biggest matches,” he insisted.

Hoeneß optimistic

“We don’t regard longer than a year as possible at the moment, and he’ll have to live with that,” Uli Hoeneß told FCB.tv, “but I personally believe that if he plays well for us, and he’s doing really well at the moment, we can keep on extending his contract by a further year – for one, two, three, four or even five years."

Hoeneß is optimistic regarding the player’s final decision. “He knows very well what he has here at Bayern, and I think that’ll make it very difficult for him to decide against Bayern, although he may be a little annoyed right now. But at the end of the day, I reckon he’ll choose to stay with us.”