Reports: Juventus’ deal for Ángel Di Maria still hasn’t reached the finish line

I know this next sentence is about to surprise many of you: There’s differing information coming out of the Italian media — in this case when it comes to Juventus’ long-awaited deal for Argentine winger Ángel Di Maria.

Not so much that the deal is in jeopardy of not happening.

In this case, it’s about just how close it is to actually being done.

Earlier in the day Sunday, La Stampa and La Gazzetta dello Sport reported that Juve’s deal for the 34-year-old Di Maria is essentially one step away from being done. That very much, as you would expect, sent a good amount of folks into celebration mode because of just how long this process has been drawn out throughout the month of June. However, later Sunday both Nicolo Schira and Sky Sport Italia’s Gianluca Di Marzio both reported within a few minutes of one another that while there were contacts between Juve and Di Maria’s camp during the day and things remain on a positive track there is still work to be done to get him to Turin.

Basically, as has been the case pretty much the last four weeks, we wait.

This deal, one that was thought to be going along the same trajectory as Juventus’ free-agent signing of Paul Pogba, has been slowed down by the simple fact of Di Maria wanting to evaluate all of his options before making a final decision on where to play next season after leaving Paris Saint-Germain.

The framework of the deal Di Maria would sign with Juventus have been known for weeks now — a one-year contract with a possible option for a second with a salary of €7 million net. That’s nothing new here, and the fact that this has pretty much been established for weeks just shows you how long that Di Maria’s evaluation process has been drawn out.

The one commonality that all of the reports from Sunday have is that the contact between Juventus and the Di Maria camp lately has been positive. There aren’t any outlets suddenly saying again that the deal is in doubt or that the thoughts from Juve’s side of the equation are positive or anything like that.

The fact that the reports say things are at differing steps of the process remains the true difference and who you want to believe is probably what you will want to go with. Nobody is screaming “DI MARIA, É FATTA!” from the mountain top just yet unless you’re one to normally do that despite what others report, but the reports seem to suggest we could get there at some point soon. How soon nobody really knows, but that kinda just seems to fit into what this whole Di Maria chase has been like the last month.