“Arturo Vidal had one year left on his contract. Jupp Heynckes, then Leverkusen’s coach, went to Bayern. He told Vidal that he would have brought him in Bavaria on a free transfer the next year. This came to the fore, and Leverkusen told him that he could have gone wherever he wanted to as long as it wasn’t Bayern. Also, Arturo wasn’t enamored with the city, he had no life. We came along and Italy became a preferred spot. His agent was very intelligent to understand the situation, and Vidal accepted our offer. The uncanny anecdote is that we discovered him in a Europa League match while we were scouting Giuseppe Rossi“.
Basically we got Vidal because he thought Germany was a boring country and he wanted outta there. If he stuck around for another year he'd be playing for Bayern now.
Thank you, depressing German cities.