The 18-year-old midfielder from Senegal has joined from the Gambinos Stars academy and signed a contract until 30 June 2031. After a successful loan spell in the second half of last season, the permanent move, planned from the outset, was recently held up for a surprisingly long time, among other things due to an unclear advisory situation and organisational difficulties.
Thanks to a special permit, Ndiaye had already started preparing for the new season with Bayern Munich, travelled to Asia with the squad and also featured in various friendlies. In the coming season, he is set to fill the fourth squad spot in defensive midfield behind Joshua Kimmich, Aleksandar Pavlovic and Tom Bischof. In the 2-1 win against Jeju SK FC, coach Vincent Kompany also tested Ndiaye on the left wing.
"Bara is a great character who found his feet at Bayern Munich in a completely new environment in a very short space of time and quickly earned a high level of acceptance within the team. We watched him for a long time, he was captain of his team, has made impressive progress over the past 24 months and carried that on in Munich," sporting director Christoph Freund enthused about the 18-year-old.
Ndiaye himself said in a statement that the move to Bayern Munich was "a very big day for me and my whole family": "I want to learn every day here at Bayern Munich from all these great players and try to help the team. A dream has come true for me."
Ndiaye is Bayern Munich's third summer signing after Nathaniel Brown (50 million euros from Eintracht Frankfurt) and Ismael Saibari (50 million euros from PSV Eindhoven). The focus has now shifted to selling the returning loanees Joao Palhinha, Sacha Boey and Bryan Zaragoza.
Bara Ndiaye joins from Gambinos Stars
Ndiaye's hometown club, Gambinos Stars, are part of the Gambinos Group, which runs three football academies in Africa. The majority shareholder in the Gambinos Group is Red&Gold Football. Bayern Munich operate that structure together with MLS club Los Angeles FC. Red&Gold also cooperate with clubs in Uruguay, Ecuador and South Korea. Jochen Sauer is managing director of Red&Gold Football and also director of youth development at Bayern Munich.
Even before his loan move last winter, Ndiaye completed several trial training sessions at Bayern Munich. In the second half of the season, Kompany gave him four first-team appearances. Ndiaye then surprisingly made it into Senegal's World Cup squad and was even brought on in the round-of-32 match, a narrow 3-2 defeat after extra time against Belgium.