Paper Talk - Juventus back in the race for James Rodriguez, Marco Verratti
With AC Milan basking in their current run of form and Inter waiting for the Pioli revolution to kick off, Juventus have taken over the transfer stories of the day, Max Allegri’s side being linked with a number of big names… including James Rodriguez and Marco Verratti!
The Gazzetta dello Sport open by mentioning that River Plate will participate in a tournament in Seville named after Antonio Puerta… the chance for Juventus to talk about Rodrigo Bentancur with them again. He has long been linked with the Bianconeri, who have an option on him, earned in exchange for Carlos Tevez.
All the papers are also rolling with Axel Witsel’s quotes from yesterday: "I'm glad that a club like Juventus hasn't throw in the towel, but I'm not asking myself too manu questions about when I will move there, whether in January or in June. I know it will happen".
This is confirmation of what we’ve reported for months.
Moving onto Tuttosport, the Turinese paper confirms our story from yesterday, in which we mentioned that Juventus are sending scouts to watch one of Portugal’s bid derbies between Porto and Benfica, to watch the likes of Andre Silva and Otavio, who have long been on the club’s wishlist.
Leonardo Bonucci’s recent admission that Juventus “are light in central midfield” are also revealing, the Turinese newspaper claiming that the Bianconeri are interested once again in Corentin Tolisso and Blaise Matuidi, of Lyon and PSG respectively. The former was a big target for Napoli in the summer, while the latter was close to joining Juventus at that time, recently revealing that he wanted the move, but was stopped by the Ligue 1 champions.
The Corriere, for its part, claims that Juventus are back in the race for Marco Verratti, who is also being courted by Man Utd, Real Madrid and Inter. The bigger priority right now, though, seems to be James Rodriguez, whose recent words ("I would like to play more, but someone wants the opposite") say a lot about whether he’ll stay at Madrid. The Colombian flew to Turin at the end of last season, though nothing ultimately came of it.
Napoli’s search for a new striker has yielded three big names: those of West Ham striker Zaza, Leonardo Pavoletti and Aleksandr Mitrovic.
