Vincent Kompany faces some difficult personnel decisions in defense for Bayern Munich later this month when the FIFA Club World Cup starts in the United States.
He has already lost Eric Dier to AS Monaco, Jonathan Tah is still not registered as a Bayern player for the tournament due to Bayer Leverkusen wanting a fee from Bayern to do so, and all of Dayot Upamecano, Hiroki Itō, Alphonso Davies and Kim Min-jae are not 100% fit.
Upamecano, however, did just resume training at Sabener Straße, but he has been out injured for a while now.
It has come out that Kompany and his coaches are potentially planning on using Josip Stanišić and Leon Goretzka as a center back pairing due to the lack of fit center-backs being available.
It’s not yet 100% certain if that will definitely be the case from the start of the tournament, but the way things are looking right now, it is certainly a strong possibility.
Kim has been linked with a move away from Bayern this summer, but there’s yet to have been any concrete offers for the South Korean international.
Additionally, per information from Tz’s Philipp Kessler and Manuel Bonke (via @iMiaSanMia), the defender will be travelling with the rest of the squad to the United States for the Club World Cup, it is just uncertain at this time whether or not he will play.
The squad is set to depart for the U.S early next week, after most of the international players will be done with their respective national team obligations to various qualifiers and friendlies.
On paper, being in a group with Auckland City, Benfica and Boca Juniors means that Bayern is expected to make it out of the group and onto the knockout stages of the Club World Cup.
As things stand, the probability for Kim is that he likely would not be risked during the group stage matches unless he is deemed 100% fit enough and it is absolutely needed. Instead, it is far more likely that if he does feature at all, those minutes would come after the group stages.
