Report: Juventus will no longer try to sign Sandro Tonali this summer

It’s been a while since we’ve heard some good ole Sandro Tonali-to-Juventus gossip.

Some of that had to do with the fact that Juve was playing every few days and the chance really churn out some transfer rumors within the Italian press was probably put on the back burner. But even then, during lockdown and when there were no games being played, the trail of bread crumbs on the rumor mill basically led back to the belief that Tonali, one of Italy’s brightest young players, is likely headed over to Antonio Conte and Beppe Marotta’s project over at Inter Milan rather than heading to Turin.

And it doesn’t look like the appointment of whom the young Italian midfielder is compared to every so often has really changed that all that much at all.

According to Goal Italia’s Romeo Agresti, Juventus’ pursuit of Tonali is basically nonexistent at this point in time. Essentially, as Agresti said in a tweet Tuesday, Juventus isn’t going to be suddenly joining the race to sign the 20-year-old Italian midfielder who looks certain to leave Brescia this summer. And seeing as Brescia owner Massimo Cellino said that Tonali prefers “Inter or Juventus” when it came to a potential destination this summer, you can pretty much figure out what’s going on there now that Juventus is reportedly out of the running to sign him.

Good times, right?

I guess it’s not much of a surprise to hear that Juventus aren’t in the Tonali sweepstakes seeing as we haven’t really heard anything to the contrary over the last couple of months. The quotes from Cellino look like the last bastion of hope that Juventus might be able to pull something off and get a Tonali deal done with Brescia.

But, as we’ve said countless times already since March, Juventus’ transfer market is going to look a lot different ah it would have prior to the pandemic because of the financial ramifications. That might as well be even more true now following the elimination from the Champions League last week and the missing out of revenue that comes with it.

Maybe that is why somebody like Sassuolo’s Manuel Locatelli has emerged as a better option simply because he won’t cost as much as Tonali will. (And, regardless of the current economic climate, Tonali is going to cost a good amount of cash.) Juventus’ front office, namely Chief Football Officer Fabio Paratici, has made it known that swap deals will dictate a lot of what kind of business the club does. And if we’re judging by what kind of business Inter has done so far this summer, Marotta is going to have a lot more money available to him as compared to his former understudy.