Wantaway World Cup winner Paul Pogba could be set for a return to Turin amid reports that the Juventus are keen to offer Manchester United a players-plus-cash deal that the Old Trafford club won’t be able to refuse.
With Juventus’ bottom line having been hit hard by the Coronavirus pandemic (not to mention Cristiano Ronaldo’s gargantuan annual salary), the team who have dominated Serie A for much of the last decade are being forced to adapt their transfer strategy which it comes to their attempts to tempt Pogba back to Italy.
Pogba – who joined United from Juventus for a then world record fee in 2016 – has largely failed to live up to his eye-watering transfer fee and has been the source of recent rancor within the club owing to comments the player’s agent, Mino Raiola, made recently in which he suggested that Pogba was unhappy in Manchester and was angling for a move.
But with their coffers considerably emptier than in recent years, Juventus have attempted to engineer a different route to Pogba’s return to Turin – reportedly by offering Manchester United TWO of their players in exchange.
Those players are Argentine forward Paulo Dybala and Italian international Federico Bernardeschi, two players who have struggled to make an impact under new boss Andrea Pirlo have been reported by ESPN as potential makeweights in any deal.
However, it is unlikely that anything of note will happen in the January transfer window but next summer seems a more attractive proposition for Juve – with it representing Manchester United’s final opportunity to generate some cash for a player whose contract expires in 2022.
It remains to be seen if the potential deal is an attractive one for a Manchester United hierarchy who appear certain that the writing is on the wall when it comes to Pogba’s future with the club.
United are known to be admirers of Dybala and have made inroads in tempting him to Old Trafford in the past – and will have been heartened by Dybala’s recent outspoken comments to media in which he was critical of the club’s contract negotiations with him.
“My agent was in Turin for a long time and was never called by the club. It disappoints me to hear talk of invested financial figures,” Dybala said to Sky Italia recently.
“It would be better if the truth could be told, because talking about those aspects in this period pits the fans against me.”
United and their executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward, though, will almost certainly be unwilling to entertain any deal that doesn’t meet their standards – having found themselves in an unenviable negotiation position given Raiola’s statements.
Either way though, it seems increasingly certain that the curtain is being drawn on Paul Pogba’s second stint at Old Trafford.
