After a few very noticeable speed bumps over the last couple of days, it looks as though Juventus’ first midfield signing of the summer is close to getting the full-on green light.
According to reports out of Italy from Sky Italia and Romeo Agresti, Juventus and Aston Villa have pretty much agreed to all figures for the swap deal that will bring Douglas Luiz to Turin. With Juve midfielder Enzo Barrenechea now taking the place of Weston McKennie, the young Argentine has reportedly agreed to personal terms with Villa and the reworked financials have been figured out. That means it will be Barrenechea, Samuel Iling-Junior and around €22 million heading to Villa with Douglas Luiz becoming Juventus’ newest midfielder.
With the deal needing to become official before the month of June ends to satisfy Aston Villa’s profit and sustainability requirements, Juventus will cash a plusvalenza upward of €36-€38 million on Barrenechea and Iling-Junior for the soon-to-be completed fiscal year.
On top of that, according to reports from Agresti and Fabrizio Romano, Juventus will have 10% sell-on clause for Barrenechea, who spent last season on loan at Frosinone as he experienced his first major taste of Serie A.
So, now we can breathe a little easier, right? The Douglas Luiz swap deal has been the No. 1 Juventus transfer story the last couple of weeks. It looked like it was going to be a relatively smooth transaction despite all of the moving parts before Weston McKennie made things a little more difficult than we thought they could be. But, after McKennie’s demands were not met and he essentially put Juve in a spot where they had to think of a Plan B, the pivot was to insert Barrenchea — who was very much somebody Thiago Motta wanted to evaluate during preseason training — to push the deal through.
And, barring any sort of sudden or last-minute kind of hiccup, the swap deal that nobody was really thinking of a couple of weeks ago will become official.
That means Motta, who is just a couple of weeks away from beginning his first preseason training sessions of the summer, will get one of his big summer targets before the month of June comes to an end. While Douglas Luiz is currently on international duty with Brazil at the Coppa America, he is expected to take his medical exams in the United States to get the deal done and able to hit “officially official” status.
It may not be the original deal that we thought it was going to be, but Juventus are very close to getting one of their top midfield targets and somebody who hopefully will prove to be the kind of midfielder needed to upgrade the long-standing area of concern for the club.