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With it looking like pretty much all of Juventus’ purchases sans a possible reunion with Leonardo Bonucci being done for the summer, most of the concentration has been put on the players that will probably be leaving the club.
Pretty much all summer it’s been assumed that Marko Pjaca is going to be playing his football somewhere other than Turin over the course of the 2018-19 season.
And after a summer transfer window that involved rumors coming and going depending on what week it is, some folks in the Italian media think that Pjaca’s next club has been determined.
According to SportMediaset and the Corriere dello Sport, the 23-year-old Croatian winger is set to move from Juventus to Fiorentina on loan in the coming days. Fiorentina, one of the main clubs who has been linked to acquiring Pjaca over the last couple of months, will have an option to buy Pjaca at the end of the season. (Note that it’s an option to buy, not a mandatory one that would basically see Pjaca’s career with Juventus be over before it really got going.)
#Fiorentina, ecco il regalo per #Pioli: arriva #Pjaca in prestitohttps://t.co/rd88sb4FEj pic.twitter.com/Gk7lfkZf72
— SportMediaset.it (@Sport_Mediaset) July 30, 2018
Pjaca, who arrived from Dinamo Zagreb two summers ago for a cool €23 million, is now about 18 months removed from the serious knee injury he suffered while on international duty with Croatia in March 2016. The objective behind his loan move to Schalke back in January was to give him the necessary playing time that he needed knowing full well that was never going to happen with Juventus in the second half of last season. Pjaca ended up playing all of about 260 minutes over the course of seven appearances for Schalke, who ended up finishing in second behind Bundesliga champions Bayern Munich.
Now, he heads to Florence in the hopes of restarting a career that really seemed to be set to take off before his knee exploded on him. A healthy Pjaca on one wing and Federico Chiesa on the other looks like a nice little combination for Fiorentina to have, too, so let’s just hope that there’s no Ex Effect going down if Pjaca does in fact sign with Fiorentina in the coming days.