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Riccardo Orsolini is one of the brightest talents Juventus currently has on its books. I don’t think anybody can deny that based on what we’ve seen from the young Italian winger, who turns 21 years old in all of about a week. And it’s why so many of us were looking forward to seeing what he could do during his first season in Serie A this year.
However, it’s not like he’s had much of a chance at all to really show what he’s capable or recreating the kind of success he had when he burst onto the scene in Serie B a season ago.
Could it mean Orsolini might play the second half of the 2017-18 season somewhere other than Bergamo? There’s certainly chatter surrounding that very topic...
A few days ago, we got this report from Gianluca Di Marzio:
Bologna have not stopped their contact with Juventus for Orsolini. In fact, they have intensified in the last few hours. There was a meeting between the two clubs in the morning. In the after, there will be a meeting between the player’s father and agent and Paratici and Bigon with the objective to free the player from Atalanta, who has to accept the interruption of his loan.
From what has been thrown out there, it doesn’t seem like Juventus has much of an objection to Orsolini heading to Bologna to finish out the current season. How that deal may be constructed — straight loan deal or something different to ensure that Bologna actually has an incentive to play Orsolini — remains to be seen, obviously.
Here’s the key state in all of this...
Orsolini has all of nine more appearances than any of do this season. That’s NINE in all competitions — seven in Serie A (a total of 107 minutes), one in the Europa League and the ninth coming in the Coppa Italia.
For somebody like Orsolini who has big-time talent and is being thought of as potentially being a huge part of Juventus’ future, playing time is vital right now.
That’s something that is obviously not happening at Atalanta — which could be somewhat of a surprise considering how they tend to do such a great job developing young talent. (Makes me think of Mattia Caldara and Leonardo Spinazzola, you know? They’ve done a pretty good job there, I’d say...)