The more Juventus Chief Football Officer Fabio Paratici talks about the kinds of ways the coronavirus will impact the summer transfer market, the more you can’t help but think that it’s indeed going to be that way. And one of the biggest things that Paratici continues to mention is just how much more prominent he believes swap deals will be because the influx of cash won’t be as prevalent as it would be in other “normal” offseasons.
And the Italian press has responded as such.
The latest proposed swap deal — at least coming from Juventus’ end of the equation — involves Federico Bernardeschi and Nicolo Zaniolo, a name that has popped up as a possible transfer target every now and then over the last 12 months. According to Tuttosport earlier this week, a Bernardeschi-Zaniolo is something that Juventus has continued to have its eyes on despite the fact the Roma midfielder suffered a major knee injury in January.
Some of the basis of Tuttosport floating a swap deal out there is that if Roma’s finances are majorly altered because of the coronavirus pandemic. In “regular” years we’ve seen Roma selling some of its best players because of financial reasons, not sporting ones. Juventus has benefited from that, getting Miralem Pjanic from Roma back in the summer of 2016. Other big names have left in recent years as well, with Roma’s roster seeing big transfer fees arrive in return for star players leaving.
Just exactly where Zaniolo falls remains to be seen.
But this could be another indication as to where Bernardeschi’s current standing at Juventus really is. It’s been a tough year, and the fact that he has struggled for much of his third season in Turin seems like it has sealed his fate in terms of where he futures stands. We don’t know where Bernardeschi fits into the squad right now, and that looks more and more of a murky picture when you consider that Juve’s one January signing, Dejan Kulusevski, is going to be coming back to Turin this summer following his loan spell at Parma.