Guirassy Stays at Dortmund After Fenerbahce’s Campaign Promise

Serhou Guirassy is still wearing Dortmund yellow, four goals into a season Fenerbahce spent promising to buy him. Managing director Lars Ricken said on June 1 that the club had no offer and no plan to sell, and the summer then proved him right.

Aziz Yildirim won the Fenerbahce presidency a week later on a campaign that treated the Guinea striker as a done deal. The German club never logged a bid it would count, the release clause Istanbul could not use expired in mid-July, and on September 8 Guirassy scored twice on his 100th Dortmund appearance in a 3-2 Champions League win over Villarreal.

The Bid That Never Reached Dortmund

Ricken spoke to WAZ on June 1, while both Fenerbahce candidates were still on the trail, and shut the door in two sentences. Sporting director Ole Book left a sliver of finance talk in the same week, but the public line from the executive floor was keep, not sell.

We have no offer for Serhou. We also have no intention of letting him go. He has impressively proven his value for Borussia Dortmund over the past two seasons.

Lars Ricken, managing director, Borussia Dortmund, to WAZ

Book, hired from Elversberg after Sebastian Kehl, put the same stance in blunter cash terms. “With his goals he is very, very important. So it is not our plan and not our premise to say that we want to give him away. Nevertheless, here too: if extraordinary offers come in, one will think about it.”

Local reporting around that interview put Dortmund’s €40 million asking price as the floor for anyone who wanted a conversation. €40 million was also the figure tied to a release clause that applied only to a short list of elite European clubs, not to a Turkish suitor. Fenerbahce was already outside the mechanism that could have forced a sale.

Yildirim Won the Presidency and Missed Guirassy

Yildirim, 73, ran on a return to the job he held from 1998 to 2018 and told supporters he would sign Guirassy if he won. Rival businessman Hakan Safi made the same promise in public, which turned a Bundesliga striker into campaign material before a bid ever hit Ricken’s desk.

“Dear Fenerbahce fans, we will be making transfer announcements shortly. You will clearly see the vision we presented in the final week of the election,” Safi said. He went further: “Whoever wins the election will secure Guirassy. Therefore, God willing, I will sign him.”

17,245 members chose Yildirim on June 7. Safi took 9,927 in an extraordinary congress the club held on June 6 and 7 beside the Şükrü Saracoğlu complex, and the board published the count the same night.

THE JUNE CONGRESS COUNT

Fenerbahce recorded 27,387 ballots, 27,172 of them valid, 135 invalid and 80 blank, across 45 boxes. Yildirim’s 17,245 votes in the June election were the highest raw total the club has given a president, and they still did not buy the No. 9 in Dortmund.

The gap between those speeches and Ricken’s “no offer” line is the whole transfer. Campaigns can announce a striker. A Bundesliga club only moves when a fee lands, and this one never did in a form Dortmund would recognise.

Why Fenerbahce Could Not Use the Clause

Guirassy signed a four-year deal on July 18, 2024, after Dortmund paid a reported €18 million to trigger his Stuttgart clause, and he still has a contract through 30 June 2028. The 2026 exit route built into that deal was narrow on purpose: a fixed fee for a handful of European heavyweights, and a free negotiation with everyone else.

German reporting said that clause expired on July 15, and that no club on the privileged list used it. Real Madrid, Manchester City, Barcelona, Liverpool, Chelsea, Manchester United and Arsenal all had a window at a capped price and left it shut. Once the clock hit zero, any buyer had to bargain with Book and Ricken in the open.

THE SUMMER THE BID NEVER CAME

1. June 1, 2026: Ricken says Dortmund has no offer for Guirassy and no intention of selling him.
2. June 7, 2026: Yildirim is elected Fenerbahce president; both campaigns had named Guirassy as a target.
3. June 10, 2026: Turkish reports claim a fee and payment plan are largely agreed; Dortmund does not confirm a deal.
4. July 14, 2026: Guirassy reports for Dortmund training; Fenerbahce files Greenwood’s move from Marseille.
5. July 15, 2026: The elite-club release clause expires unused.
6. September 8, 2026: Guirassy scores twice on his 100th Dortmund appearance against Villarreal.

Mid-July German reporting said the striker had rejected Turkey in clear terms, which matched his presence at the training ground the day before the clause lapsed. Later Turkish stories of a €25 million instalment deal and a medical in Istanbul never produced a joint announcement from either club.

Dortmund Planned Around the No. 9 Who Stayed

Coach Niko Kovac and Book had already sat with Guirassy before the break and told him they wanted him for the new season. The sporting case was simple enough: he had just finished a second Dortmund campaign as the club’s leading league scorer, and the attack was about to lose width if Karim Adeyemi’s path to Barcelona went through.

He arrived from Stuttgart as a 28-year-old who had just scored 28 Bundesliga goals in 28 games. In 2024-25 he put 21 more in 30 league matches and 13 in 14 Champions League games, sharing that season’s European golden boot with Raphinha, then added 17 league goals in 33 games in 2025-26 while missing time at the Africa Cup of Nations.

First two Bundesliga seasons in yellow: 38 goals in 63 games. All competitions across those two years: 88 appearances and 60 goals before this season even started. Book’s “extraordinary offer” line was a finance hedge, not a for-sale sign, and no offer of that size arrived from Istanbul.

Transfermarkt last carried a €32 million market value on May 27, which sat under the €40 million floor Dortmund had put on a negotiated sale. Selling him to Fenerbahce at the numbers Turkish desks were floating would have been a cut-price exit for a striker who had already paid back the Stuttgart fee in goals.

Istanbul Spent a Club Record on Greenwood

Fenerbahce did buy a high-end attacker in that window. It was Mason Greenwood, not Guirassy, and the club’s own filing left no room for the rumour mill that later tried to inflate the number.

On July 14 the listed company told Turkey’s public disclosure platform it would pay Marseille €39 million, and on September 1 it had to repeat the figure after a forged €50 million document circulated. The €39 million KAP disclosure is the live number: a four-year contract, paid in three equal €13 million instalments, a club record above the €28 million paid for Matteo Guendouzi.

WHAT ISTANBUL ACTUALLY BOUGHT

• The star fee: Greenwood arrived from Marseille for €39 million, the most expensive deal of the Turkish summer window.
• The campaign overlap: Yildirim and Safi had both named Greenwood as a target, so the board that won the vote closed the other name on those lists.
• The missing No. 9: Guirassy never took a medical in Istanbul, never signed, and never left Dortmund’s books.
• The rest of the line: Fenerbahce’s later internal briefing listed Vedat Muriqi, Nathan Ake and Romelu Lukaku among the same summer’s arrivals, a forward rebuild that went around the Dortmund striker rather than through him.

Safi had tied his candidacy to big names that needed a president’s chequebook. He lost the vote, and the one elite attacker who did move to Kadıköy moved under Yildirim, at a price that sat in the same neighbourhood as the figure Dortmund had put on Guirassy, except this time the selling club was Marseille and the player was 24.

The political use of Guirassy was always the loud part. The quiet part is that a clause Istanbul could not trigger, a player who would not go, and a German club that did not need the money in that form left the campaign with a poster and no registration.

Four Goals After a Summer of Unconfirmed Deals

By the time the window was a memory, Guirassy had already started 2026-27 as if the noise had belonged to someone else. Two Bundesliga games, two goals. One Champions League night, two more. The Franz Beckenbauer Supercup was the blank in a 4-game, 4-goal start, and then Villarreal arrived at Signal Iduna Park on September 8.

He scored in the 80th minute and from the spot in the 85th in a 3-2 win, his 63rd and 64th Dortmund goals, on the night he reached 100 competitive matches for Dortmund. The club’s own note put him behind only Erling Haaland’s 86 in 89 games among recent black-and-yellow strikers, and past Robert Lewandowski on the club’s Champions League list.

GUIRASSY IN A DORTMUND SHIRT

Those 19 European goals in 25 Dortmund matches moved him past Lewandowski’s 17 in 28. Only Marco Reus, on 24 in 72, still sits ahead of him in the club’s Champions League scoring list. Book, speaking in the mixed zone after Villarreal, did not sound like a man running a clearance: “And everyone knows that Serhou Guirassy is one of the best strikers around.”

I’m very, very happy to have played a hundred games for Dortmund – I didn’t even realize that.

Serhou Guirassy, striker, Borussia Dortmund, after Villarreal

He called it a strange, crazy game and said the team could have done better. He also told Prime that passing Lewandowski was special “because he’s a great striker.” The 30-year-old who was supposed to be in Istanbul in late July was instead counting a century in the Ruhr, and he had not even clocked the number until someone told him.

Fenerbahce’s own television account clipped the Villarreal brace the same night. That is the aftertaste of a campaign that sold a registration it never completed: the striker is still on the other shirt, and the goals are still coming in bunches.

Frequently Asked Questions

Did Serhou Guirassy Join Fenerbahce in 2026?

No. He remains Dortmund’s No. 9, Transfermarkt last priced him at €32 million on May 27, 2026, and he has already started the 2026-27 Champions League in yellow-black. No medical, contract or FIFA registration tying him to Fenerbahce was ever published by either club.

What Was Serhou Guirassy’s Dortmund Release Clause?

It was a capped fee for a short list of elite European clubs only, and German reporting said it lapsed on July 15, 2026, with no activation. Fenerbahce was not on that list, so any move to Istanbul would have been a normal negotiated transfer above Dortmund’s public €40 million floor.

Who Won the Fenerbahce Presidential Election in 2026?

Aziz Yildirim defeated Hakan Safi on June 7, taking 17,245 votes to 9,927 from 27,387 ballots. Club rules give that board a compressed mandate until the regular congress already set for 2027, which is why the summer window carried so much of the campaign’s weight.

How Much Did Fenerbahce Pay for Mason Greenwood?

The club’s KAP filing dated July 14, 2026, puts the fee at €39 million, paid to Marseille in three €13 million instalments over three years, on a four-year contract. That broke Fenerbahce’s previous record, the €28 million paid for Matteo Guendouzi, and the club later went to prosecutors over a forged document that claimed €50 million.

How Many Goals Has Guirassy Scored for Borussia Dortmund?

Sixty-four in 100 games in all competitions as of September 8, 2026, including 40 in 65 Bundesliga matches and 19 in 25 Champions League matches. He shared the 2024-25 Champions League scoring title with Raphinha on 13 goals, and his 28-in-28 league season at Stuttgart in 2023-24 is still the hitting display that made the €18 million Dortmund fee look small.

Guirassy left the Villarreal pitch with two more goals and a century he had not noticed. The campaign that named him as a prize closed three months earlier, and the shirt is still the same.