Reports: Cristiano Giuntoli finally set for Juve move after agreeing to Napoli exit

After weeks of waiting, weeks of updates as to whether Napoli will budge, weeks of non-updates and supposed deadlines coming and going, Juventus are finally set to get their man to lead the sporting area in place.

According to multiple reports out of Italy on Friday, Cristiano Giuntoli has finally been given the green light from Napoli — and, namely, club owner Aurelio De Laurentiis — to leave with a year left on his contract and begin his new adventure at Juventus. It ends weeks of speculation as to when the (insert choice descriptive word or two here) De Laurentiis would actually let the man who constructed his Scudetto-winning squad leave after Giuntoli reportedly agreed to personal terms on a long-term deal with Juventus well before the summer transfer window arrived.

It was after a meeting earlier in the day Friday in which Giuntoli and De Laurentiis finally came to terms on an early exit, allowing the former to get to Turin and begin his attempt to reconstruct Juventus’ roster. According to Sky Italia, that agreement involves Giuntoli leaving as much as €5 million in salary and bonuses on the table.

Sky Italia’s report further goes on to describe Juventus’ new front office setup as Gintoli being the head of the sports area while Giovanni Manna — who was promoted from the Next Gen team and has been handling the team’s business over the month of June — will be the club’s sporting director in title. Those new roles will be clarified over the next few hours, Sky says.

But there’s no denying who the figurehead of Juve’s new front office will be — and that’s the 51-year-old Giuntoli.

And we are well aware of the task that is in front of Giuntoli once he does finally officially joins Juventus and gets to work on rebuilding this fallen giant of a club. There’s working with a budget that is surely not very big at all this summer, but also trying to firmly determine what the status is of some of the club’s biggest stars like Federico Chiesa and Dusan Vlahovic. The club needs to generate money — with multiple reports saying that it needs to be a nine-figure total — and also put together a roster that can compete for a European spot come for the 2024-25 season.

No matter what, though, Giuntoli appears to be just a contract signing and a post on the Juventus website away from getting going on said job. For Juve, that was one of the most important things to get done this summer no matter how long De Laurentiis balked at things.