Reports: Juventus will not exercise Alvaro Morata’s buy option

As much as there was a buy option of €35 million to make Alvaro Morata’s loan deal a permanent one, it’s been a pretty safe assumption that Juventus was never going to pay that amount of money this summer. That price was never going to be what Juve deemed fit, and they were never going to commit that much of their summer transfer budget when there are so many other things that need addressing.

And it looks like that’s what will have Morata going back to Spain this summer.

As first reported by MARCA and later confirmed by Italian transfer reporter Nicolo Schira, Juventus are not going to be picking up Morata’s buy option, this sending the Spaniard back to Atletico Madrid this summer, with a future unknown from there. Juventus had been seeking a lower fee to try and retain Morata — who has spent the last two years back in Turin on loan — but Atleti wasn’t going to budge from the €35 million

According to Schira, talks between Juventus and Atletico Madrid have broken down.

As noted in the tweet embedded above, Juventus had been seeking a fee of no more than €20 million to make Morata’s deal permanent. However, Atletico Madrid has reportedly been steadfast all along in the desire to give no discount at all even though Juventus was willing to buy Morata, albeit at a significantly lower price.

That doesn’t look like it’s going to happen.

It will mean that Juventus will need to replace another in attack with the departure of Paulo Dybala — which we know about already — and the expected one of Federico Bernardeschi, which pretty much seems like a certainty at this point. The rumors of Giacomo Raspadori coming to Juventus haven’t been nearly as prevalent as they were a month or so ago, but there’s certainly going to be plenty of activity happening as Juve replace at least two strikers and one winger this summer.

Morata hasn’t had nearly as productive season as he did a year ago. The most notable dip has come in terms of his goals scored, which have gone from 20 in all competitions a season ago — which tied a career high during his lone season back at Real Madrid — to just 12 in 48 games (35 starts) during the 2021-22 campaign. His assist numbers in all competitions have also gone down from 11 a year ago to just three this season.

You can understand why Juventus didn’t want to pay the full €35 million buy option no matter how decent of an option Morata is to have thanks to his versatility up front.

But you can also understand why Atletico Madrid wouldn’t want to budge from said price tag knowing that Morata can probably go elsewhere this summer for a decent amount of money. (It seems like there’s always going to be the Barcelona rumors that we saw back in January because, well, Barcelona is just linked with a ton of people these days.)