The Old Lady of Turin is facing a very modern conundrum. Giorgio Chiellini, now a director at Juventus, has essentially placed a price tag and a warni...
The Old Lady of Turin is facing a very modern conundrum. Giorgio Chiellini, now a director at Juventus, has essentially placed a price tag and a warning on Dusan Vlahovic. The message from the boardroom is clear: these salary figures simply do not compute for the Serie A economy.Let's be brutally honest here. Vlahovic arrived amid great fanfare, a statement of intent in the post Ronaldo era. But the arithmetic of football has changed. When your chief executive openly tells GoalZaza that the striker probably won't stay in Italy with those wage demands, he is reading the contract out to every sporting director in Europe. This is not a negotiation; this is a notice period.The implications for Max Allegri's tactical setup are massive. If you are planning your low block and looking for a target man to hold the ball up, you need that player to be committed. A striker who knows he is a temporary resident is a striker who starts worrying about his own numbers rather than the team's shape. Can Juventus really afford to build their transitional play around a frontman whose bags are half packedWhat we are seeing here is a classic power shift. The player wants Premier League wages, but the club wants Champions League revenue. Something has to give. For the fans, it is squeaky bum time. Does the board cash in this summer and reinvest in a more tactically flexible forward, or do they let the contract run down and watch him walk for a fee that makes you wince Chiellini has lit the fuse. Now we wait to see who blinks first.
