South Korean Kim Min-jae, Italian champion with Napoli and named Serie A’s best defender last season, has signed a five-season contract until summer 2028 with Bayern Munich, the Bavarian club announced Tuesday.
According to German media, the release clause included in the three-year contract signed in the summer of 2022 by Kim Min-jae would amount to around 50 million euros for a club at the level of Bayern Munich.
His arrival on the side of Säbener Strasse reinforces a defensive sector which could move in the coming weeks.
Frenchman Lucas Hernandez, who arrived in the summer of 2019 for 80 million euros (making him the most expensive signing in Bayern and Bundesliga history so far), joined Paris SG for a forty million euros.
Like Hernandez, Benjamin Pavard is out of contract at Bayern on June 30, 2024, and after four seasons at Bayern (seven in Germany), he has indicated that he does not want to extend his contract.
At Bayern in central defense, Kim Min-jae will find the Frenchman Dayot Upamecano and the Dutchman Matthijs de Ligt. The reigning German champions have already recruited Portuguese left-back Raphaël Guerreiro, who was out of contract with Borussia Dortmund.
At 26, the South Korean international (47 caps) is experiencing rapid progress. Trained in his country, he was named the rookie of the 2017 season, then was named in the K-League type team in 2018.
After two seasons in China in Beijing, he joined Fenerbahçe Istanbul in the summer of 2021, then arrived in Sicily in the summer of 2022 to compensate for the departure of Kalidou Koulibaly who shook all of Naples when the Senegalese signed for Chelsea.
In the space of a few weeks, he reassured all Napoli supporters in a register close to Koulibaly, tough on the man, imperial in the air and ready to throw himself forward with great strides.
He was one of the great architects of the third Neapolitan Scudetto, the first since 1990, thus attracting the spotlight of the biggest clubs.
