Report: Juventus hold talks with Antonio Conte in case Max Allegri leaves

By all accounts, the Juventus front office — Andrea Agnelli, Fabio Paratici and Pavel Nedved — want Max Alegri to be the club’s manager going forward into the 2019-2020 season. That message wasn’t any different when it came from Allegri himself following Juve’s relatively surprising exit from the Champions League quarterfinals against Ajax on Tuesday night.

But, even with the quarterfinal exit earlier this week, Juventus might just be doing some advance planning just in case they find themselves in search of a new manager.

And it just so happens to involve an old friend.

According to Sky Sports News in the United Kingdom, Juventus has held talks with former manager Antonio Conte regarding the club’s managerial position. The caveat is that it involves replacing Allegri if he is to depart the soon-to-be eight-time Serie A champions at some point in the near future — which could very well happen regardless of what both he himself and the clubs hierarchy have said over the past 36 hours.

Antonio Conte has held preliminary negotiations with Juventus — in case they decide to part with manager Massimiliano Allegri in the summer.

Sky Sports News understands the talks were simply to sound out Conte’s availability.

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Conte, who won three consecutive Serie A titles in his previous spell as Juventus manager, feels his immediate future is likely to be in Italy.

Sky Sports didn’t exactly get into detail when it came to how preliminary the preliminary talks were, but it’s not the first time that we’ve heard about Juventus and Conte — who has been out of work since the summer when Chelsea replaced him with Maurizio Sarri — possibly having a reunion come the summertime. Six weeks ago, the Corriere dello Sport was the first to link Conte with a possible return to Juventus — a working relationship that didn’t exactly end on a positive note five years ago.

For all we know, we could be seeing Allegri signing a contract extension in the next month or two. Or, if it comes to that point, we could be seeing Juventus and Allegri parting ways by mutual consent because they’ve come to a realization that this working relationship has run its course and it would be better for both parties to move on.

If that does happen, though, it seems as though Juventus has at least done a little bit of planning for the future.