Report: Juventus, Schalke begin negotiating deal for Julian Draxler

Fabio Paratici's short two-day voyage over the river and through the woods to Germany has come and gone. That could mean a number of things. The biggest one is that along with Beppe Marotta, Juventus' sporting director and one of the club's main target's current team can begin to talk transfer figures.

Yep, it's Julian Draxler time. At least, it's Julian Draxler time when it comes to Juventus and Schalke talking about Julian Draxler. Catch all that? Good, good.

Juventus continues to work on signing Draxler. After the bianconeri's sporting director Paratici met with the player and his agent (their request is €5 million a season), the bianconeri have started negotiating with Schalke, the German club is asking for €30 million while Juventus is willing to offer €20 million plus bonuses. Draxler remains a target for Juventus.

(Source: Gianluca Di Marzio)

Obviously when it comes to the paragraph above from Di Marzio, the thing that jumps out is the €10 million difference between Juventus' reported offer and what Schalke want for the German midfielder. Whatever the bonuses may be would shrink that number down a little bit, but we'll just call it a big difference between the two figures for the time being.

But it's not like Schalke wanting and subsequently setting the bar high where they'll probably get tooooons of money for Draxler was ever going to be a surprise. It might not be anything close to what Wolfsburg supposedly wants for Kevin Bruyne or what it might cost to get Mario Gotze away from Bayern Munich, but it's still a pretty hefty chunk of change to bring the 21-year-old German to Turin this summer.

Add in the reported salary demands of €5 million a year after tax -- which would immediately make him one of the highest paid players at Juventus -- and Draxler is going to be an expensive move no matter what the final transfer fee may be. Which one will be agree to first? Ah, that's the million dollar question. Or maybe in this case, it's a potentially €30 million question.

The easy thing to do would be to tell the two clubs to split the difference and the would be that. But that's not how negotiating works in this day and age of monster transfer fees. Dralxer has a buyout clause, and Juventus are always going to try and be shrewd with its money on the transfer market. Juventus seem like they're getting close to putting the full-court press to try and get Draxler to Turin. And that's on top of Paratici foregoing the first day of full squad preseason training and fyling out to Germany.

In the meantime, I'm just gonna go search for Draxler on vine and waste some time that way.

Ah, that's beautiful. Mr. Draxler put them on skates.