Reports: Juventus unlikely to offer Federico Bernardeschi a new contract

With April almost upon, we are getting extremely close to crunch time when it comes to Juventus settling all matters involving impending free agents. There is less than two months left in the 2021-22 season, and surely there is the need for clarity on the players’ end so that they can figure out what the heck they’re going to do if they are not Juventus players on July 1.

We already know of one player who won’t be with Juventus next season, with the Paulo Dybala contract non-renewal taking up a lot of space on this corner of the internet over the last week. (You know, when Italy isn’t stumbling over itself and not qualifying for the World Cup.)

We could be learning the fate of another soon-to-be free agent soon, too.

According to La Stampa (via TuttoJuve.com) and La Repubblica (via Calciomercato.com), Juventus are unlikely to offer winger Federico Bernardeschi a new contract and allow the 28-year-old Italian to leave on a free transfer this coming summer. If that does indeed take place — and there’s not a lot telling us otherwise right now that would give us pause and think he will be staying — he will join Dybala in heading out to another club because Juventus’ management team chose not to renew his deal before it expires at the end of June.

Bernardeschi makes a reported €4 million net a season, which is about middle of the pack for this current crop of Juventus players. (We all know who makes more and he probably doesn’t deserve to make, say, nearly twice as much as Bernardeschi does.)

But, according to TuttoJuve’s post, Bernardeschi — much in the same way that Dybala went about things — was not willing to take a significant pay cut as Juve look to bring down their wage bill this summer. For Bernardeschi, it’s reported that Juventus offered him in the neighborhood of €2.5 million net a season if he were to renew his deal.

Now, these two players have had very different levels of success since they joined Juventus. Bernardeschi was one of Italy’s biggest and brightest young players when he became the first of the recent host of players to go from Fiorentina to Juventus, and has failed to show anywhere close to the promise he showed in Florence. There are likely a whole host of reasons for that, ranging from the player himself and the varying systems in which he tried to fit into, but at this point Bernardeschi just is who he is. We all know the serious dip in form he took after that gangbuster showing against Atlético Madrid in the Champions League.

And while the post-Euro bump in form to start the 2021-22 season was a pleasant surprise, Bernardeschi has come back down to earn in recent months, thanks in large part of a muscle injury that kept him out for pretty much all of February.

In recent weeks, Bernardeschi has been linked with a potential summer move to AC Milan, Roma or Lazio.