For the second summer season in a row, Atalanta has seen a defender they took from Juventus on mortgage and made his deal everlasting slightly beneath 12 months later.
First it was Cristian Romero. Now, a yr later, it’s Merih Demiral.
In what turned out to be a comparatively shocking transfer primarily based on what we heard just some brief days in the past, Atalanta introduced Friday evening that they’ve exercised the choice to purchase Demiral outright from Juventus for a reported €20 million. This comes after studies earlier within the week made it seem like Atalanta weren’t going to take up the choice to purchase Demiral, who was then set to return to Juventus with a comparatively unsure fast future ready for him.
As an alternative, Demiral will — a minimum of for now — be a Atalanta participant in full, with there nonetheless very a lot being some uncertainty about who he performs for subsequent season as a result of they might pull one other transfer like they did with Romero, who they purchased outright from Juve final summer season earlier than flipping him to Tottenham for a really good revenue.
There have been a handful of Premier League golf equipment thrown on the market over the previous few days that could possibly be focused on signing Demiral this summer season, so it’s one thing you possibly can’t rule out, proper? Particularly so when you think about Atalanta gained’t have cash from European soccer coming in subsequent season.
However to see this sudden flip go from “Yeah, there’s no approach Atalanta goes to select up the choice on Demiral” to this factor turning into official and Demiral totally turning into an Atalanta participant, it’s fairly shocking. I do know there was a dance off if Atalanta would or wouldn’t truly purchase Demiral outright, and these final couple of days of reporting by the large names inside the Italian media solely show that.
The chance of Demiral coming again to Juventus this summer season by no means actually appeared like a risk to start with. Due to his need to hunt starter-level minutes and is coming off a 2021-22 season by which he performed practically 2,000 minutes in Serie A alone with Atalanta. With Matthijs de Ligt and new membership captain Leonardo Bonucci round, Demiral would have entered the season as Juventus’ No. 3 middle again and the assure of stater’s minutes wouldn’t have been there.
All of that’s moot now. Demiral is an Atalanta participant (in the intervening time) and Juventus has some cash to hopefully spend on a defender to assist the defensive position get slightly youthful. Whereas the route by which we’ve taken to get this level was slightly attention-grabbing, we’ve undoubtedly reached the most probably end result.
