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One striker who was expected to leave has left town. Now it's time to focus on the other that is pretty much assumed by everybody with a brain to be wearing some other jersey than Juve's bianconeri next season.
That would be Fabio Quagliarella. Yeah, the same player who started all of three Serie A games and wasn't even a a part of Juve's Europa League squad a season ago. The same player who has been surrounded by rumors of a potential exit seemingly every time a transfer window approached and/or opened the past two years.
Rumors have come, rumors have gone. Some offers have come and gone, too. But the end is always the same — Quagliarella is still wearing a Juventus jersey even though teams across Europe clearly want the guy who scores insane FIFA14-like goals in his sleep. It's been the same song and dance, same pattern, same everything, really.
Until now ... perhaps.
The Quagliarella-to-Torino machine is gaining some steam as Juventus look to kick things up transfer-wise with the window officially open. And as the GdS points out Monday, there's reportedly a key factor in where Quagliarella's next destination may or may not be.
Today's #gds: #Quagliarella says "No" to #Verona, Quagliarella "I want @TorinoFC_1906 " Marotta asks 5 million euros. pic.twitter.com/ImEvIxqDXk
— Omid Zamani (@Juventus__fan) July 7, 2014
That comes off the back of a Gianluca Di Marzio report that says Torino are actively trying to sign the 31-year-old Quagliarella this summer.
He can leave Juventus, but he might not leave Turin. Torino are very interested in the striker and that's why his agent Bozzo didn't speak with Hellas Verona, as reported by Luca Marchetti. Torino want Quagliarella.
But why Torino? Simple in theory, really. Torino is the club where grew up, playing for them until 2005 when he left on a free transfer to Ascoli. If he thinks this is one of his last stops in his career, then he might as well go back to the club that launched his professional career.
As we've seen these last few, though, Quagliarella isn't shy from shooting down a team — domestic or abroad — that is interesting in signing him. But something just tells me that the vibe with a potential move to Torino is different than, say, a proposed move to Hellas Verona as makeweight to acquire Juan Iturbe or some bottom-of-the-table team in England.
Regardless of where he ends up, the end game is still the same: It's just another step in the reworking of Juventus' 2014-15 strike force. The writing was on the wall months ago when it came to his future in black and white stripes. Quagliarella knows his time is up in Turin. Well, on the Juventus side of Turin, that is.
