Report: Gonzalo Higuain, Sami Khedira don’t want to end their Juve contracts a year early

Judging by the general sense of the transfer rumor mill, Juventus might be looking to shed some salary and free up some money before any actual additions take place. There have been rumors here and there about who they are interested in — like, you know, a certain midfielder who plays for Udinese — but that is being far outweighed by who could be leaving over the next month or so before the 2020-21 season starts.

We’ve heard that Juventus is trying to get free of the final year of the contracts with Sami Khedira and Gonzalo Higuain. That is very much the kind of move that would be very helpful for a club that is looking to get younger, healthier and save some money at the same time. But, as you might guess, that’s not going to be so simple.

There’s a very good reason for that: Higuain and Khedira are two of Juventus’ highest paid players. And as much as Juventus’ front office might want to clear their salaries off the books so that they can go about their other summer business, the players and their respective representatives aren’t totally down with letting go of such large sums of money for the upcoming season, according to a report from the Corriere dello Sport on Saturday.

Now, that’s not exactly all that difficult to figure out since Higuain earns €7.5 million net and Khedira ain’t too far behind at €6 million. If your current employer was trying to get you to give up a salary that you might not be worth anymore and you wouldn’t make as much as if you went elsewhere you would probably feel exactly the same way as Higuain and Khedira currently do.

See? Makes sense.

As much writing on the wall as there may be for both Khedira and Higuain when it comes to their future in Turin, any kind of negotiations to see them end their spells at Juventus by mutual consent seems a lot tougher than it was with Blaise Matuidi. Of course, Matuidi didn’t make as much money and had a club in Inter Miami lined up, which is why terminating his contract by mutual consent came about in easier fashion.

But with Khedira and Higuain, the the amount that each of them make is going to have this matter being much more complicated than any of us would have liked. Their massive salaries and what the ages are have played big roles into why they are still Juventus players. We know that is certainly the case with Higuain based on the simple fact that he wasn’t sold to another club last summer. With Khedira, it’s very much the problem now, with a midfielder who has been injured for much of the recently completed season and turned 33 years old in the spring making that kind of money isn’t exactly a desirable commodity.

So now we wait, I guess.

That’s all we can do outside of hoping for some kind of positive resolution to all of this.