Report: Paulo Dybala will sign his contract extension once his agent can travel to Italy

We have been under the impression that Paulo Dybala, at some point soon, is going to sign a brand spankin’ new contract with Juventus for the last month or so. Seeing as when that report from SportMediaset came to light, there was a very understandable caveat: Dybala had to both get 100 percent healthy after batting COVID-19 and, nearly as important, finally be able to return to Juve’s headquarters to actually make the agreement official.

There is now another thing preventing Dybala from putting pen to paper on his shiny new deal.

And, surprise! It has to do with coronavirus ... but not as worrisome as the previous two.

According to La Gazzetta dello Sport — which has since confirmed (at last) that Dybala will be signing a contract extension through 2025 — Juve’s No. 10 won’t make his new deal with the club official until his agent can travel to Italy and hammer out a few final details. When it is all said and done, Dybala will be the first Juventus player to sign on through 2025, adding three more years onto his current contract that runs through the 2021-22 season.

Dybala, who was deemed healthy and recovered from coronavirus on May 6, has been one of the handful of players to mark their return to Juventus’ training facility last week for individualized training. Dybala also took part in Monday’s first set of group training alongside the likes of Leonardo Bonucci, Rodrigo Bentancur and Federico Bernardeschi.

With Dybala signing his new deal, it will mark the latest in what has been a wild ride over the past 10 months. Recovering from COVID-19 is going to be one of the bigger things we will remember about this season whatever happens next in terms of resumption. But, when you consider where things were last summer and the fact that as the month of July went on last year it looked like he was more and more likely to leave Juventus, this is quite the turn for a player who was coming off quite a mixed bag of a 2019-20 season under Max Allegri.

Dybala has been one of the best players under Maurizio Sarri, with his role becoming bigger and bigger despite the fact that Juve’s first-year manager relatively slow played the 26-year-old Argentine’s introduction into the squad. Dybala, knowing full well that he could have been a Manchester United or Tottenham player, has turned out to be one of Juventus’ best players this season. He has been a star in the Champions League, one of Juve’s top goal scorers in Serie A despite the fact that he’s come off the bench a good amount of the time this season.

It has truly been a return to the kind of Dybala we know that he can be.

And he’s about to get rewarded for it. Well, just as soon as his agent can actually get to Italy. But seeing as Dybala has proven that being so steadfast last summer and wanting to stay at Juventus to prove his worth, signing said contract extension is something that he probably won’t mind waiting just a few more days and/or weeks to do.