GELSENKIRCHEN, Russia — Vladimir Putin is accused of meddling in German soccer to try to prevent the sale of his favorite goalkeeper to Bayern Munich.

The Russian prime minister was said to have ordered the chairman of Schalke 04 to “do everything” to stop the star player Manuel Neuer from transferring to Germany’s leading club at the end of last season.

“[Putin] was absolutely besotted with Manuel and is a huge fan of his,” Clemens Tonnies, the chairman of Schalke, told the magazine Sport Bild. “He asked me to do everything we could to keep Manuel.”

Tonnies did not say where the conversation had taken place, but it could well have happened when he visited Putin at the Moscow White House in May as the guest of the Gazprom chief executive Alexei Miller. Gazprom, the Russian state-controlled power giant, sponsors Schalke.

But not even Putin’s pressure nor Gazprom’s millions could keep Neuer, who was also sought by Manchester United, in the Schalke shirt that bears the Russian company’s name. He followed his dream to play for Bayern and was sold for a reported fee of $31 million (€22 million).

“For Manuel, it was no longer a question of money. We had to accept that,” Tonnies said. “He wanted to change.”

The revelation of Putin’s attempt to stop the sale of the nation’s top goalkeeper came as another unwelcome reminder that Moscow still takes a keen interest in German affairs, days after Berlin announced the arrest of the first alleged Russian spies on its territory since the Cold War.