Juventus director Fabio Paratici reveals Miralem Pjanic ‘would only have left for Barcelona’ and age played a part in their choice of Arthur Melo.
The Bianconeri visit Genoa tonight at 20.45 UK time (19.45 GMT), click here for the line-ups and LIVEBLOG.
“Genoa are a side who don’t belong in their current position, as they have an excellent coach and squad at their disposal,” the Chief Football Officer told Sky Sport Italia.
Juventus director Fabio Paratici reveals Miralem Pjanic ‘would only have left for Barcelona’ and age played a part in their choice of Arthur Melo.
The Bianconeri visit Genoa tonight at 20.45 UK time (19.45 GMT), click here for the line-ups and LIVEBLOG.
“Genoa are a side who don’t belong in their current position, as they have an excellent coach and squad at their disposal,” the Chief Football Officer told Sky Sport Italia.
“It’s going to be a complicated game, we must try to win every match. At this moment, it’s as if we were at the end of pre-season training, so players need more time on the pitch than they do rest.”
It’s also June 30, so Juventus and Paratici have been very busy on the transfer market, signing Arthur Melo from Barcelona for €72m plus €10m in bonuses, selling Pjanic to the Spaniards for €60m plus €5m add-ons.
“Logically, the transfer market is part planning and part opportunity. In this particular deal, we had both elements. Pjanic is a very important player for us, so when the option emerged, we spoke to Miralem and he said he was happy here, so the only club he would’ve left us for was Barcelona.
“We found this player Arthur, who we had been tracking for a long time, and who is younger than Pjanic.”
Juventus did more deals today, sending Pablo Moreno to Manchester City in exchange for Felix Correia.
“Felix is a winger who is strong in taking men on, he’s very talented and we’d been following him for a while too. He was more functional for our U23 team project compared to Moreno.”