Newcastle's $100 million Woltemade move forces rethink at boyhood club: 'I'm killing myself with the transfer'

BREMEN -- Newcastle United may be happy to get their new striker after Nick Woltermade joined from VfB Stuttgart in a deal worth $100 million, and Stuttgart will be happy with their fee, but his youth team, Werder Bremen, have a different view. Just a year ago, Woltemade left Bremen on a free transfer in search of playing time and found it with Stuttgart. It only took one year with the club, scoring 12 goals and making a debut for the German national team at only 22, for him to land a massive move to the Premier League.

For Bremen, all they'll see from the move is a solidarity fee, and it's something that sparked a change with the German club. Bremen CEO Klaus Filbry spoke about the fallout and how it led to moving on from manager Ole Werner despite finishing in the top half of the Bundesliga to focus on youth.

"I'm killing myself with the Woltemade transfer. I'm sure that it's basically the best to get a player for nothing, so congratulations to Stuttgart basically getting a player for nothing and sending him a year later, after seven or eight months of significant playing time, for 85 or 90 million [Euros]," Filbry said.

"We get a solidarity fee, and I'm happy for the player. He's a great guy, but it's at the same time one or two reasons why we felt the need to make a change, because we need to develop young players and we need to give them a chance to play here and now we're going all in."

Under new manager Horst Steffen, who managed Woltemade when he was on loan at SV Elversberg, Bremen has put out the youngest team in the league, with an average age of 24.4 when they faced Eintracht Frankfurt, and it's the first step to getting the club back to the rich history of relying on their academy. When you're not Bayern Munich or RB Leipzig in the Bundesliga, balancing sales and growing players is critical to success and sustainability.

Frankfurt has become a Champions League club and a challenger for the top four from investing in development, and Hugo Ekitike's sale to Liverpool is a good show of that. Stuttgart are another club who have used sales to get to the top of the Bundesliga, and while it hurts for someone like Woltermade to leave, it does also provide cash that can help improve the squad, along with funds to keep their players.

In a league where the 50+1 rule requires clubs to be majority owned by members instead of corporations -- with some exceptions like Bayern Munich -- it can be tough to provide investment to run clubs without also selling players. With Werner preferring experienced players, while it did push Bremen up the table, it hurt them in the ability to generate sales of young players.

Performance may be important in soccer, but the business aspect is also critical, and sometimes midtable can be one of the worst places to be. Not strong enough to gain European qualification, but also not poor enough for relegation to force a complete rebuild it can be a slow march to purgatory. Bremen are looking to avoid that and return to their roots, but only time will tell if it will also end their drought of European soccer along the way. Either way, having a vision and clear goals are better than having none at all.