For a club so used to winning titles by the dozen, Juventus are enjoying a rather oddly fallow period. Last year snapped their near-decade long dominance of Italian football, while the club has also enjoyed several European campaigns to remember in that time. The Juventus team, though, has been a shadow of its former self in the last 18 months, with last season and this proving to be mostly frustrating for fans of the Bianconeri.
The return of Max Allegri as coach was supposed to bring about a strong tactical foundation to the squad. When paired with the mixture of youth, prime, and experienced veterans within the squad, too, competing for the Scudetto was believed to be the bare minimum. However, it looks like things could be falling apart in Turin.
For one, it looks like the club will need to find a new forward to be reliant upon. The long-term injury suffered by Federico Chiesa, an ACL tear in the wonderful 4-3 win against AS Roma, means he is out for this season and perhaps some, or most, of next. It also means that Juventus will need to sign a player who was on a two-year loan with the obligation fee despite the fact he will contribute nothing more this year or next.
This leaves Juve looking for a new forward to bring in, despite having pretty deep financial issues. The original hope was that the club could end the loan of Alvaro Morata and also sell on Dejan Kulusevski to bring in the funds needed to sign a new forward. The club was expected to make a move for Italian hotshot Gianluca Scamacca. That, though, now looks highly unlikely.
A lack of funds means that Juve are also facing another major headache in the forward department.
Paulo Dybala set to leave for nothing?
With his contract up in the summer of 2022, Paulo Dybala is now down to his last six months on his Juventus deal. The Old Lady were believed to have agreed new terms with the player on a wage in the region of €10m per year. However, this has fallen through, with reports suggesting that Juve offered a new, reduced contract that was nowhere near the same value to the Argentine.
Frustrated and annoyed, Dybala now looks likely to at least test the free agency market in the summer. The club has annoyed their star forward, the player expected to take over from Cristiano Ronaldo, and he now looks set to depart for nothing in the summer.
This leaves Juve scrambling for a replacement for a player who should be worth in excess of €80m on the transfer market for nothing. With the club already in financial disarray, this could cause a major headache for the Turin giants as they try and rebuild the squad without having the funds needed to really commit to a full rebuild.
For now, expect a desperate attempt to find a Chiesa replacement until the summer. At that point, it is nigh-impossible to determine how the Bianconeri top-brass will reconfigure a squad that looks increasingly lopsided.
