Report: Juventus working on contract extensions for Leonardo Bonucci, Paulo Dybala

When your team starts to truly achieve more and more domestically over more than just a season or two, in Europe or both, your top players are going to attract the interest of others. Not all of them will move to, oh I dunno, the team they used to play for, but they will be the subject of rumors and other suitors.

Like it or not, that’s just how it is, that’s how it’s always going to be and there’s really nothing we can do about it. Well, at least when it comes to the dumb transfer rumors part of it.

But Juventus apparently has an idea. It’s one that a lot of us can support, too.

According to the Sunday morning edition of Tuttosport and other Italian media outlets, Juventus are working on contract extensions for both defender Leonardo Bonucci and striker Paulo Dybala. The thought process behind it, according to said reports, is to not only give Bonucci and Dybala a nice raise in terms of yearly salaries but also use it as a way to fend of any potential suitors that the two stalwarts may have in the coming transfer windows.

Not that Bonucci — rumored to be offered €5 million a season — and/or Dybala — rumored to be offered in the area of €4.5 million a season — have given indications that they want to leave. Both do seem quite happy right where they are. But you never know. It’s a different world these days.

Of the two, it seems as though the renewal of Bonucci’s contract is further along. Tuttomercatoweb seems to think that a possible agreement between Bonucci’s representatives and Juventus’ management team is relatively close. This wouldn’t be the first time in recent weeks that contract extension talk has been mentioned, with an Aug. 18 report from Sky Italia suggesting that Juve had opened talks with Bonucci — who was linked with a move to Chelsea and Manchester City during the recently-closed summer transfer window — to keep him in Turin for the foreseeable future.

While his tenure at Juventus isn’t as long as Bonucci, there’s no denying that the big-money European giants are going to come calling about Dybala if they hadn’t already. There have been rumors of Barcelona being interested in the young Argentine dating back to his days with Palermo. There’s going to be plenty of other chatter surrounding Dybala if he continues to progress at the current rate he’s at. He’s just too good not to have the richest of the rich trying to sign him away from Juventus.

So, yes, contract extensions for all of the really good players sounds like a great plan. Keep them coming because I like when Juventus has really good players on its roster.