Reports: Juve, Sassuolo meet again, fail to agree to Manuel Locatelli deal again

Stop me if you’ve heard this before, folks.

Juventus and Sassuolo meet to discuss midfielder Manuel Locatelli and the player’s obvious desire to move to Turin and only Turin. The two sides say some things to each other, maybe have a little bit to eat while they are negotiating a potential deal. At the end of the chat between Juventus’ representatives and those from Sassuolo, the same thing as the previous meetings takes place — the two sides meet without a deal being agreed to.

And it was like that Friday.

According to Sky Italia’s Gianluca Di Marzio and Romeo Agresti of Goal Italia, the latest meeting between Juventus Chief Football Officer Federico Cherubini and Sassuolo’s front office to discuss a Locatelli deal ended with no deal being struck. Sassuolo is very much aware that Locatelli only wants to move to Juventus this summer, but the club’s demands continue to be more than what the Cherubini is willing to offer at the moment.

Ah, negotiations are fun, aren’t they?

Neither Di Marzio nor Agresti say what Juventus’ latest offer for Locatelli involved Friday, but made it clear that Sassuolo is still very much on the side of a firm “No!” rather than getting ever so closer to getting a deal done.

But, at the same time, the longer this thing gets drawn out — and it’s been this sort of same trend of meet, Juventus make an offer, Sassuolo rejects it for weeks now — the more of a chance this turning into a serious problem. August is almost here, and that means the start of the 2021-22 Serie A season is all of three weeks away. Even though Locatelli is still on holiday following Italy’s triumph at Euro 2020, there’s only so much time he would have to work with his new teammates before the season starts.

No matter what, though, there seems to be another meeting to come in the coming days. And let’s just hope this rinse-and-repeat trend doesn’t continue because Juventus needs to get this deal done as soon as they possibly can.