Reports: Juventus, Atlético Madrid unable to find agreement for Alvaro Morata

Things were always going to be difficult when it came to Alvaro Morata seeing his second stint at Juventus going beyond this month. Atlético Madrid clearly didn’t want to come down from the original €35 million price worked into the deal that saw Morata come back to Turin two years ago, and Juventus were clearly not willing to pay that much.

The deadline to get something done has come and gone.

And, according to all the heavy hitters in the Italian media, nothing has been solved.

Juventus and Atlético Madrid failed to meet any sort of resolution when it came to extending Morata’s stay in Turin beyond the 2021-22 season, according to the likes of Fabrizio Romano, Goal Italia’s Romeo Agresti and Giovanni Albanese of La Gazzetta dello Sport. That means Morata, who has spent the last two seasons at Juventus after arriving on a season-long loan and then seeing the option to extend it a year exercised, will be heading back to Spain with a very uncertain future ahead of him now that Juventus looks to be out of the picture for now.

Per Agresti, Juventus even tried to offer up players to potentially turn the deal into some sort of swap deal — Moise Kean has been a name thrown out there —

Trying to get Atléti to come down from their €35 million price tag to purchase Morata outright this summer was always going to be an uphill battle for the Juventus front office. While we don’t know the total details surrounding what Juventus was offering to try and get some kind of deal done, it looks like it doesn’t really matter what it was because the other end of the negotiations were so totally entrenched in their stance.

Over the last few weeks, as much as the two sides worked for some sort of deal, there appeared to be little actual progress being made, thus the chances of Morata actually coming back to Juventus on a permanent deal less and less likely.

All of this comes just under a month after reports came out that Juventus weren’t going to be taking up the option to buy Morata. That price? Yep, €35 million.

Since then, Juventus clearly tried to find some sort of resolution to bring Morata in on a permanent deal. But, like we’ve heard continuously over the last few weeks, Atlético had no interest in budging from anything other than that €35 million price tag.

So now Juventus has another hole to fill on the roster for the 2022-23 season. Considering what else has — or hasn’t — happened so far this offseason, it might not have been all that clear to see what Morata’s role would have been on next year’s squad. Would have been a backup to Dusan Vlahovic? Would he have been a starter on the left wing knowing that Juve continues to go after players who are more suited for the right in a 4-3-3?

It looks like we’re never going to get an answer for that and Morata’s future again heads into a space where his next club might not be the one that currently owns his contract. In a summer of changes, this was a pretty expected end result but one that will see even more work done by Juve’s front office to fill another void left on the roster.