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In the days following Cristiano Ronaldo’s arrival at Juventus, rumors started swirling that one of his longest-tenured teammates in Madrid, Brazilian left back Marcelo, might not too far behind him in switching La Liga for Serie A. As one would assume, they also came with the caveat that Juventus’ current Brazilian who plays left back, Alex Sandro, was going to head out on a big-money deal over the summer.
About two months later, Alex Sandro is still around and it seems like we can pretty much forget about all of that talk about Marcelo signing to play on the same team as his old buddy Cristiano again.
And it’s because Marcelo has told us so.
“I’ve heard so many stupid things, I’m here until the end. Some people become opinion leaders and create things that don’t exist. I’ve seen and read a lot of nonsense. I’m as fired-up as Vinicius, who is 18, I’ll stay here until the end of my career.”
(Source: Football Italia)
Well, so much for that.
As much as the prospect of Marcelo joining Juventus was an intriguing one, getting Alex Sandro to play like 2016-17 season Alex Sandro rather than 2017-18 season Alex Sandro pretty makes the need for somebody of Marcelo’s caliber non-existent. We know the player Sandro can be because he’s shown us that. And throw in the fact that he seems happy and is rumored to be working on a new contract, then it’s pretty clear which direction Juventus are going when it comes to which Brazilian will be their left back for the next few seasons.
Who knows how much interest Juve actually had in Marcelo or if this was just something try to connect the dots because Ronaldo and Marcelo had so much success together at Real Madrid. But when you have somebody like Alex Sandro around and he’s playing like Alex Sandro more often than not, there are few options better at that position than him.