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With a contract with Juventus that runs through 2023, Alex Sandro’s time at the club he’s been at since the summer of 2015 is likely coming to an end one way or another.
It just so happens that it might come a year before said contract expires.
According to Calciomercato’s Daniele Longo over the weekend, Juventus has decided that now is the time that it will part with the longtime fixture at left back. Or, maybe not right now right now, but over the summer, with a the hopes of selling the 31-year-old Brazilian — hello, Premier League, would you be interested? — for some sort of transfer fee the end goal. On top of that, Juventus has also reportedly identified a potential replacement for Sandro that could end up competing for playing time with an in-house option like, say, Luca Pellegrini: AZ Alkmaar’s 22-year-old Dutchman Owen Wijndal.
#Juve, comunicazione arrivata per #AlexSandro. #Wijndal il preferito ma c’è un nome a sorpresa https://t.co/HLn5Dq8lxs pic.twitter.com/UMUvTN2Ksr
— calciomercato.com (@cmdotcom) March 26, 2022
Sandro’s form the last couple of years has been far from the player that we saw when he first signed from Porto and quickly established himself as one of the best players at his position in all of Europe (and the world). These days, you don’t know what kind of Sandro you’re going to get. You might get lucky and get a throwback kind of performance, but those seem to happening less and less often as he’s gone into his 30s.
But this has definitely been the worst of the bunch during his time at Juventus. He’s lost playing time to Pellegrini and Mattia De Sciglio, while battling both injuries and COVID-19. If you ever wanted to see a case where it’s time for Juve to move on from a player who has been a loyal servant but doesn’t add what he used to, it is most definitely Sandro.
Over his time with Juventus, Sandro has been linked with a move to the Premier League on more than one occasion, with the most memorable being when Chelsea were reportedly set to offer somewhere in the neighborhood of €50 million for him when he was at the heigh of his powers on the left flank.
But those days, at least in terms of garnering that much of a transfer fee, are certainly over. It certainly will be interesting what kind of market will develop for a player like Sandro who will be 32 next January and obviously isn’t the kind of player that he used to be when he first showed up at Juventus. And especially so in these times where some teams aren’t as open to taking a risk on a player who used to be one of the best there is while making a pretty good paycheck on top of it.
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