Are Xavi Simons and Désiré Doué a sign of things to come at Bayern Munich?

In Désiré Doué and Xavi Simons, the club looks to add two high-profile names that would easily break the club’s single-season record spending. But that is part of a long-term plan to curb spending.

Bayern Munich continues to have one of the most intriguing summer transfer windows. The Bundesliga giants currently lead all European clubs in transfer spending, having paid €145.5 million for new players.

To put that in perspective, that is just €42.2m short of last summer’s record transfer window. In Désiré Doué and Xavi Simons, the club looks to add two high-profile names that would easily break the club’s single-season record spending.

The high-stakes pursuit of super talents Doué and Simons is part of a larger picture at Bayern. Although sporting director Christoph Freund and director of sport Max Eberl have stressed that the club needs to not only get younger players in the door but also bring down the wage bill, there is also a fundamental understanding that significant short-term investments are required to balance the squad.

“We want to strengthen the squad,” Christoph Freund said at the Hiroki Ito presentation earlier this week. “The transfers we've been able to complete so far were ones we really wanted. We'll see what the coming weeks bring. It was important for us that we could get a few done early.”