Juventus have declared their plans for next season – to settle for nothing less than the UEFA Champions League trophy.
Juventus wrapped up a fifth successive Scudetto despite having suffered early season jitters, when their fans started doubting the club’s chances of defending the title. Napoli’s defeat at Rome meant Juve have won the title with 3 matches to spare.
Max Allegri, the AC Milan coach who was fired from San Siro via email, has been successful since taking over from Conte. On Sunday, he admitted that retaining the Scudetto by winning 24 out of 25 games was close to impossible, but now they must aim for champions league glory.
“Next year we must target winning the Champions League. It’s reductive to focus just on Serie A. It’s one of those competitions where one incident goes wrong and you don’t have time to recover. We can improve the players we’ve got and help them reach maturity, as for example we were naïve against Bayern Munich when in control of the situation. “
“The club will focus on improving the squad, as it did last summer, bringing in young players with great technique. Paul Pogba has improved a great deal in terms of character. I said the other day joking that as the €100m wouldn’t go to me, I’d rather keep Pogba!” (via FootballItalia)
Gazzetta reports that Juventus’ transfer strategy will revolve around bringing three quality signings for next season, two midfielders and one striker, to add to whatever they already have. Provided that Juve are able to make these signings, it will bring for them a much needed injection of class to what is already a prolific title winning side.
Two Midfielders
Dortmund’s outstanding Henrikh Mkhitaryan has been courted by Juventus since last year when they were looking for various solutions in the final third of the pitch. Juve have been rebuffed in their attempts to approach Real Madrid’s Isco, Bayern’s Gotze and Julian Draxler, who left Schalke to join Wolfsburg.
The 27 year old Armenian, who replaced Gotze, has 18 goals and 18 assists for Tuchel’s team this season in all competitions.
Andre Gomes is another name on Juve’s radar. With Claudio Marchisio out for the next 8 months and all set to miss the Euros as well as Juve’s start to next season, Gomes would be a good replacement. Juve are set to secure the ex-Benfica man from Valencia for a fee rumoured to be around 20-30 million euros in the summer.
The Dream Return of El Matador
Edinson Cavani was nothing short of phenomenonal in Italy during his time with Palermo and later Napoli. Juventus are long time admirers of the Uruguayan who secured a huge money move to PSG, an offer Juve could not match at that point of time.
With Alvaro Morata looking likely to leave the club after Real activates his buy-back clause, Cavani would be the ideal replacement. A potential deal with PSG would burn a hole in Juve’s pocket despite Cavani being 29. To add to that, there is a small matter of his astronomical wages. Gomes, Mkhitaryan and Cavani will cost Juve at least 120 million euros in transfer fees. However the manager, the players and the administrators look increasingly ambitious looking forward to next season.
