Report: Juve throw out one last Hail Mary to try and extend Adrien Rabiot

The general assumption for weeks now is that Adrien Rabiot will be donning the jersey of another team come later this summer, signing a nice and healthy contract in the process. This is nothing new, and the fact that Rabiot’s future has already been pretty much written outside of an official farewell is just a sign of what we’ve all expected to be the case.

That was until this week.

... Maybe.

According to Sky Sport Italia transfer oracle Gianluca Di Marzio, Juventus has launched one final attempt to keep Rabiot in Turin for at least 12 more months. As Di Marzio lays out, Juve have offered Rabiot a Hail Mary offer of sorts — a one-year contract at the same salary in which he has been paid over the course of the last four years during his time in Turin. The reason for that offer besides the obvious of trying to keep one of Juve’s better performers this season, Di Marzio says, is to take advantage of the growth decree in Italy.

Rabiot has been one of Juventus’ highest earners since he joined the club back in the summer of 2019, earning a salary worth €7.5 million net a season.

Di Marzio gave no indication as to if Rabiot and his mom-gent Veronique are even considering staying at Juventus for another or if they are basically just looking to to cash in on the best season Adrien has ever had in his career. But you have to believe that, at this point, the way things have been going in terms of Rabiot leaving Juventus, a last-ditch effort to get him to stay — especially with so much uncertainty and no Champions League football — is probably going to come up short.

Offering Rabiot a one-year deal with no bump in salary seems like the only thing that Juventus can really do at this point. As much as we’ve joked about Contract Year Rabiot and his next deal should just be a bunch of one-year contracts stacked up one by one, giving him a long-term contract at a salary that would probably put him as one of the top couple of earners at Juventus would pretty much go against what we’ve heard the club wants to do this summer. It’s about trimming down the overall costs on the roster, but especially cutting down on bloated contracts that aren’t going to be as easy to afford as they have been in years prior.

As good as Rabiot’s 2022-23 season was — and there’s no doubting that he was one of Juve’s best players this past year — it also means that clubs in a much better financial state than Juventus would suddenly become interested. It wasn’t so long ago that Rabiot nearly left Juve in the summer of 2022, only for Manchester United to call off contract talks because his was asking for too much money. Now, those demands might not be looked at as such a silly idea by some clubs.