Juventus Transfer Targets

Who will Ciro Fer­rara bring to the Old Lady?

With the silly sea­son well under­way, Juven­tus have been busy try­ing to strengthen their squad ahead of the 2009/2010 sea­son. A few pieces of busi­ness have already been agreed, Fabio Can­navaro has signed from Real Madrid, long term tar­get Diego was brought in from Werder Bre­men for a €24 mil­lion. Olof Mell­berg has joined Olympiakos for €2.5m and highly rated Azzur­rini star Domenico Crisc­ito made his loan move to Genoa per­ma­nent for around €5.5m, plus Pavel Nedved decided his time was up as he retired from our beau­ti­ful game.

It is rumoured Juve have roughly another €20–30 mil­lion left to rebuild this sum­mer, a host of names are said to sur­plus to require­ments, the most high pro­file being David Trezeguet, Jonathan Zebina and Chris­t­ian Poulsen. If these play­ers are sold this may add to the already bulging cof­fers, but where and who will Juven­tus spend this sum­mer. I will give you a run down of the most likely arrivals in Turin.

Firstly, the areas I believe Juve must rein­force are the full back areas, par­tic­u­larly left back, and cen­tre mid­field, adding cre­ativ­ity and bite to the lack­lus­tre cen­tre they cur­rently have. In addi­tion a pos­si­ble for­ward, as Del Piero is now mov­ing towards the twi­light of his career and Iaquinta does not have the required qual­ity for a Juven­tus side look­ing to chal­lenge on three fronts.

Gae­tano D’Agostino

Gae­tano D’Agostino — €12–15 million

What a year it would be if for­mer AS Roma youth prod­uct man­aged to secure a trans­fer to the Turin giants. Start­ing his career as a wide player, he has remod­elled him­self as a play­mak­ing defen­sive mid­fielder in the Andrea Pirlo mould. His per­for­mances have been fan­tas­tic for Udi­nese this sea­son and he earned his first Italy call-up back in Novem­ber then mak­ing his debut against North­ern Ire­land in June. He would be an excel­lent acqui­si­tion for the Bian­coneri who looked to add a bit of verve to the cen­tre. The trans­fer so far has been an on/saga all sum­mer with Juve unwill­ing to meet Udinese’s price tag of €16 mil­lion. The player wants to join Juve, and Juve want the player, expect more nego­ti­a­tions before the sum­mers out, but this one should go through sooner or later.

Mahamadou Diarra

Mahamadou Diarra — €15–18 million

The Malian mid­field gen­eral has already been linked with Juven­tus this sum­mer at the rec­om­men­da­tion of for­mer team­mate Can­navaro. Out for pretty much the whole of last sea­son with a knee injury, he is the added steel Juve need on the cen­tre. He is very much a tough tack­ling mid­field gen­eral and will look to stamp his author­ity on the Juven­tus mid­field. He will also be avail­able as Real Madrid have his name­sake Las­sana whilst track­ing for­mer Juve tar­get Xabi Alonso, he will be deemed sur­plus. Pos­si­ble stum­bling blocks for me are the size of the fee and the sim­i­lar­i­ties to Momo Sissoko.

Fabio Grosso

Fabio Grosso — €7 million

What can be said about Fabio Grosso, well we know he has his best games in the blue of Italy, the last ‘big’ club he was at, he flopped, the club in ques­tion Inter­nazionale. After spend­ing two years in France play­ing for Lyon it seems he wants a return to the penin­sula, with Juve head­ing the queue. An inte­gral part of the 2006 World Cup win­ning side, and still a huge part of Marcelo Lippi’s 2010 World Cup plans, he would be ideal as a short-term solu­tion to the prob­lem left back slot. Soon to be 32 years old, time is not on his side, but in his defence he will run tire­lessly up and down his flank and the pos­si­bil­ity of link­ing up with inter­na­tional team­mates Chiellini, Can­navaro and Buf­fon could make Italy’s World Cup prepa­ra­tions very inter­est­ing indeed.

Andrea Dossena

Andrea Dossena — €5–10 million

In my opin­ion Andrea Dossena is not of the desired qual­ity Juven­tus need to progress. He is prone to defen­sive lapses and his deliv­ery on the over­lap is erratic at best. The main part of his game is energy, he will give 100% every time he pulls on foot­ball shirt no mat­ter who for. He has not bro­ken into the Liv­er­pool first team this sea­son, and is behind Fabio Grosso in the Azzurri line up. Given that Liv­er­pool would look to recoup the €7 mil­lion they paid Udi­nese, I think Dossena is a player Juve should avoid, too expen­sive and no bet­ter than what they already have.

Goran Pan­dev

Goran Pan­dev — €17–20 million

After a suc­cess­ful sea­son with Lazio, the man from Mace­don­ian is in demand, Bay­ern Munich are reported to be inter­ested as well. He would pro­vide ver­sa­til­ity, as he is accus­tomed to play­ing as a striker, second-striker and winger. He could ade­quately fill the void left by Nedved. But do Juve des­per­ately need another striker you may ask, I would say yes but not for the money Lazio are ask­ing, if a reduced fee can be agreed then it would make sense to bring him in.

Xabi Alonso

Xabi Alonso — €15– 20 million

Juven­tus tried and failed to bring the Spaniard to the Olimpico last sum­mer due to a dif­fer­ence in val­u­a­tion with the Liv­er­pool board. He then went on to have prob­a­bly the best sea­son of his career and cer­tainly his most effec­tive on Mersey­side. He pro­vides cover for the defence, with great antic­i­pa­tion cou­pled with an extra­or­di­nary read­ing of the game. He is blessed with supreme tech­nique and eye for an inci­sive pass. He would com­pli­ment Sissoko/Marchisio well and should be con­sid­ered a def­i­nite pur­chase. How­ever, with inter­est from Real Madrid it may be hard to per­suade him to choose Serie A over La Liga.

Lest we not for­get the young play­ers try­ing to break into the first team. Sebas­t­ian Giovinco, Paolo De Ceglie and Clau­dio Marchi­sio. All three have had fan­tas­tic sum­mers in Swe­den with the U21 squad. Giovinco par­tic­u­larly impressed and if given the chance will blos­som is Bian­coneri through and through. De Ceglie and espe­cially Marchi­sio both broke into the first team last sea­son, the lat­ter more so. If Fer­rara can blend these home­grown tal­ents with some astute pur­chases then La Vec­chia Sig­nora may well push Inter all the way this com­ing season.