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In the minutes following Paulo Dybala landing in Turin and heading to the place he has called home for the last four years, the reports out of Italy said that Juventus’ No. 10 wouldn’t be reporting to training and undergoing his medicals until the weekend ended.
On Sunday, there was a pretty good sign that Dybala will actually be there.
According to The Telegraph in England, Manchester United has “pulled the plug” on their reported swap deal involving Dybala and Belgian striker Romelu Lukaku. The reasoning is the same thing we’ve been hearing about for the entirety of the short-lived transfer saga: United weren’t sure as to whether Dybala was fully committed to leaving Juventus and the fact that he was demanding a whole lot of money — something that the Red Devils had basically been offering from the start.
And just as The Telegraph reports that United are done trying to sign Dybala, Sky Sport Italia’s Gianluca Di Marzio is reporting that Inter is back in for Lukaku because they see a sudden opening.
Man Utd pull plug on a deal for Paulo Dybala amid reservations about the Juventus striker’s desire to move to Old Trafford - and the player’s enormous wage demands | Exclusive from @TelegraphDucker https://t.co/JTrMyrHiyF
— Telegraph Football (@TeleFootball) August 4, 2019
Based on the fact that the Dybala end of the equation was always going to be the more difficult side of things, this kind of development was always going to be a possibility no matter what it looked like from the outside.
Dybala, signed through 2022 and one of Juventus’ highest earners, has been steadfast in his desire to stick with the Italian champions. That was the case when he was being linked to other European giants in previous summers, and that has been the same kind of thing — although through Italian media outlets reporting it — throughout the current summer transfer window.
Now, according to The Telegraph, it looks like that desire has driven Manchester United away from making a deal that so many thought was going to go through before the end of the Premier League’s transfer window on Thursday.
So now we wait and see about Dybala showing up to training on Monday. And that talk that he’s bound to have with his new manager, Maurizio Sarri. And to see if he’s smiling come the first time he’s shown on social media accounts as he arrives at J Medical. And so on, and so on, and so on.