Report: Nicolo Fagioli wants to stay at Juve, not go on loan, as contract talks start

Nicolo Fagioli has been a name we’ve known about for a few years now. He’s worked his way up the Juventus youth ranks, impressing enough on the way to earn lofty praise from Max Allegri along the way during his first stint as manager in 2018. He’s gotten a taste of what it’s like at the senior level with Juve, only to be sent out on loan in Serie B for the 2021-22 season.

That loan spell, by all account, was a resounding success. And because of it, Fagioli has his eyes set on bigger and better things as he comes back to Turin to discuss his future.

According to La Gazzetta dello Sport on Thursday, Juventus and Fagioli’s agent, Andrea D’Amico, will sit down soon to discuss a new contract that would keep the 21-year-old midfielder at the club until 2026. There is one condition that Fagioli wants to have be a part of the contract: The chance to play for Allegri during the 2022-23 season and not go out on loan for a second consecutive season, instead sticking in Turin to try and prove he belongs after impressing with Cremonese.

“The player has placed, as the only condition on the signing of the new agreement, that of remaining in the squad of Juve in the upcoming season,” writes Gazzetta reporter Marco Guidi. “No other loan, even in Serie A.”

The obvious thing in all of this is that if Juventus keeps Fagioli — who was named the best young player in Serie B this past season — around for the 2022-23 campaign, what does that mean for Juve’s other young midfielders?

We know there have already been reports late last month that Allegri wants to keep another Juve youth product, Fabio Miretti, around next season. Nicolo Rovella, Miretti and Fagioli’s teammate on Italy’s Under-21 squad, is also coming back from a loan spell at now-relegated Genoa, with his future seemingly a little more uncertain than it was a couple of months ago before Miretti burst onto the scene the last month of the 2021-22 season and became a legitimate option for next year.

Fagioli sticking around would mean that Juve have two homegrown players in their midfield and suddenly go against the norm of trying to develop two youngsters at the same position for the first time in a long time. There are expected departures in the midfield like with Arthur and Aaron Ramsey and maybe even Adrien Rabiot, but there’s also the matter of Paul Pogba likely coming home, which means there’s going to be some decisions to be made.

Either way, Fagioli has, like Miretti, forced the issue when it comes to potentially be part of next season’s squad. And when it comes to young players of their age, that’s what you want to see.