Juventus and AC Milan, trying to secure new players

Despite the financial crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, both Juventus and AC Milan’ managements are focused on finding viable solution to reinforce their respective teams. Juventus may close soon for Olivier Giroud while AC Milan is targeting Ozan Kabak.

Olivier Giroud is again a Juventus’ target for January. After the initial interest last summer, Juventus now is seriously considering adding one striker to the team. Andrea Pirlo, Juventus’s manager, asked for a pure striker since he realized that neither Dybala nor Alvaro Morata can play as center forward. Both players as well as Cristiano Ronaldo prefer to play far from the net and having a forward as referring point in front of them. It is not the first time that Andrea Pirlo requests a forward.

Last summer, Juventus was close to sign Luis Suarez first and then Edin Dzeko. However, both strikers finally decided to move to Atletico Madrid the former and stay at AS Roma the latter. Not only Olivier Giroud could be the perfect man to fix the role requested by Andrea Pirlo but also, he could be a cheap solution given the financial issues experienced by Juventus over the last 12 months. Olivier Giroud has not been used extensively by Frank Lampard this year (only 189 minutes in total) and it seems that he will be happy to leave Chelsea. It appears that Chelsea would be keen to sell the French world champion for a reasonable transfer fee creating the right approach to positively conclude the transaction with Juventus.

AC Milan has identified the defense as the department to reinforce. The absolute priority is to give to Stefano Pioli, AC Milan’s manager, a central defender. Despite the fantastic job done by Simon Kjaer and Alessio Romagnoli, the two central defenders cannot play all the games, and, in case of injury, AC Milan may be in troubles. Therefore, according to the rumors, AC Milan is full force on Ozan Kabak, talented defender class 2000 playing now for Schalke 04.

The Turkish defender is the first priority for AC Milan and Frederic Massara has moved the first steps to secure Ozan Kabak. Schalke 04 has lowered its demands to 20 million euros and is increasingly oriented to sacrifice its jewel to begin to remedy a disastrous budget. However, AC Milan would not want to go above 15 million euros. Should the negotiation stall, AC Milan will switch focus on Mohamed Simakan (Strasbourg) or Matteo Lovato (Verona).

On another issue, it seems that AC Milan is closer to renew the contract of Gigio Donnarumma. The young goalkeeper’s contract is expected to end in June 2021. The situation is very delicate since losing Donnarumma for free next summer would have devastating consequences for AC Milan’s balance sheet. However, it seems that Donnarumma’s agent, Mino Raiola, is currently negotiating the renewal with Ac Milan as well as the extension of Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s contract. Also the contract of Hakan Calhanoglu may be renew before the end of 2020 since it appears that all the parties involved are closed to a positive negotiation.