Reports: Juventus, Paulo Dybala want to sign his new contract by Christmas

Over the last few weeks, a few people have dropped into the mentions of the BWRAO Twitter account and asked a very fair and reasonable question: “When the heck is Paulo Dybala going to sign his new contract?” I wish, at the time, I had an answer because we all know just how long it has been that this whole thing has been drawn out and been a thing hanging over now multiple seasons.

With the end of the calendar year approaching, there still is no contract signed.

Or at least right now. That could change in a couple of weeks, though.

(Yes, we’ve said that before. And a time or two before that. And a time before that.)

According to Goal Italia’s Romeo Agresti and Fabiana Della Valle of La Gazzetta dello Sport, both Dybala himself as well as agent Jorge Antun and the Juventus front office want the 28-year-old Argentine to has much-talked about contract extension signed before Serie A’s holiday break. Both outlets are reporting that Antun will be making the trip to Italy in the new few days, with the hopes of wrapping things up once and for all, creating the green light for Dybala to finally sign his new contract through 2026.

“All parties want to sign before Christmas” is a good thing because we’ve been waiting for this contract extension to be signed for well over a year now. It doesn’t sound like it’s anything close to a hard deadline or anything else — you know, the type of thing that would spur rumors that other clubs may be lying in wait come January to try and sign Dybala on a free.

The good thing is that if it does happen before Christmas, it would put to an end a contract negotiation that has gone on for the better part of the last two years. Remember, contract talks started before the shutdown in Italy in the early months of the pandemic. And now that we’re just a few months away from the two-year anniversary of said shutdown and the postponement of the 2019-20 season, we are still waiting for Dybala to be standing next to a front office member or two with a big smile on his face while he takes some photos.

Nothing in terms of how the contract will be structured has changed for weeks, if not months now. It’s still going to run through 2026 with the annual salary going to as much as €10 million — a figure that would make Dybala the highest paid player on the team. As much as the negotiations have been drawn out, the salary figure has never really changed all that much over the past few months after talks resumed following Max Allegri’s return to Juventus.

So now, like pretty much the last year and a half, we wait. Hopefully, this time, it actually ends with Dybala signing his contract extension. That sure would be nice — and would save a whole lot of time wondering when it will actually become official.