Mario Gotze Ruled Out of UCL Final: Convenient, Legitimate or No Big Deal?

Mario Gotze has played his final match for Borussia Dortmund.

The Germany international failed to win a fitness battle following a hamstring injury suffered against Real Madrid last month, and on Wednesday he announced he would not be part of manager Jurgen Klopp’s matchday squad for Saturday’s Champions League Final.

“It was my great goal to play in the Final, and I fought hard for it in the last couple of weeks,” he told the club’s official website. “I’m very sorry that I won’t be able to help the team in this crucial match. I have full confidence in our team and will of course make the trip to London to support the lads as best I can.”

"

Bin traurig und enttäuscht, dass ich dem Team im Finale nicht helfen kann...//I am sad and disappointed that I... fb.me/31iOdqQg3

— Mario Götze (@MarioGoetze) May 23, 2013"

“The lads,” of course, are his Borussia Dortmund teammates. But opposite them will be the Bayern Munich players Gotze will be joining in the summer after agreeing to a €37 million move to Allianz Arena in April.

According to The Guardian, Bayern announced the deal just days before Dortmund kicked off their Champions League semifinal against Real Madrid, and when asked about the transfer prior to the match, Klopp conceded it “could have been timed better.”

He continued: “Now, I can say that time heals everything. It’s going to take a while—this is not good news for us. The timing of it is not ideal. Anybody can make their own minds up as to why it’s come out now, but it is out.”

Given the conflicting emotions Gotze would have undoubtedly experienced had he been able to line up at Wembley, you can understand why some eyebrows initially went up when he lost his fitness battle.

With the question of his participation in the match—and the obvious controversy surrounding it—no longer an issue, Dortmund had managed to sidestep a rather uncomfortable, even distracting situation ahead of their biggest match since 1997.

Of course, they would have preferred to have gone into Saturday with Gotze fully fit and the news of his transfer still under wraps. That the story got out doesn’t look good on Bayern, and if there was ever an element of conspiracy surrounding the announcement, they, more than Dortmund and Gotze himself, have been the conspirators.

And so we go into the most prestigious match of European club football without one of the continent’s top young playmakers. Officially, it’s because he’s injured, but you have to wonder how much of a contribution he would have made had he been fit. Surely he didn’t want word of his transfer to surface before the end of the season, and in that light his hamstring strain has perhaps been a blessing in disguise.

But this should not be permitted to happen again.

There’s something of a tradition in Germany of announcing summer transfers in the winter and spring, and while the accompanying conflicts of interest don’t typically come with such high stakes, the practice is nevertheless an unethical one.

The governing bodies, both at international and domestic levels, should move to ensure transfer announcements are only made when the playing calendar has been completed so as to avoid a situation like this in the future.

They can call it the “Gotze Rule.”