Sassuolo President Lorenzo Squinzi says Domenico Berardi will cost Juventus €25 million next summer

With Domenico Berardi getting his first Italian national team this weekend, there's an obvious spotlight on the young forward with so much hope attached to his skinny shoulders. He got plenty of attention before, and it's only going to increase now that Antonio Conte has given him the Azzurri call everybody has been waiting for.

As a result, people are saying lots of nice things about Berardi because that's what you do when a young and talented player gets the big call-up. One of those folks is Sassuolo President Lorenzo Squinzi, a person who certainly has seen Bersrdi grow from a young teenager into the player he is today. That means answering questions about Berardi's future, too, because it's virtually impossible to be asked about Berardi and not talking about what will happen with the 21-year-old striker.

This is what Mr. Squinzi has to say about any kind of move that involves Berardi heading out to a club that just so happens to wear black and white stripes during the next summer transfer window:

"At the end of the season, Juventus can activate their option on him. If they want him then they have the right to take him away, but only for a sum above €25 million. Otherwise, he will continue to wear our lovely shirt."

(Source: Football Italia)

I do have to say, the Sassuolo shirt is a pretty nice one. So he's got a point on this front, folks.

But here we are with the essential confirmation that Juventus do in fact have a buy-back option to bring Berardi to Turin in the same fashion they did with Simone Zaza last summer even though Sassuolo bought him outright 12 months earlier. It wasn't officially announced when Berardi's co-ownership deal ended and he went to Sassuolo in full, but the wink-wink, nod-nod kind of deal was something pretty much everybody expected was to be there.

And when it comes to that buy-black option — or first right of refusal, if you wanna call it that — we also know the price it will take. That's not exactly something we truly knew with Zaza outside of pretty much guesstimating that it's just a tad more than what his co-ownership deal would be. Is the €25 million price tag that Squinzi has thrown out there a fair price? Yeah, probably. You take into consideration that it took Sassuolo €10 million to buy the other 50 percent of his contract this summer and he is only adding to his value, then yeah, €25 million to acquire Berardi isn't so far fetched.

Remember, now that Sassuolo own 100 percent of Berardi's contract, they've got the power. Juventus may have the right to purchase Berardi over the summer, but like Squinzi said, they don't meet that price, then he will be wearing that lovely shirt for another season.