Come the start of the 2026-27 season, Juventus will have a new player wearing the No. 9 shirt.
That is because, as has been growing in likelihood over the last few weeks, things are over between Juventus and Dusan Vlahovic, their polarizing No. 9 who has been locked in a contract negotiations saga for much of these past few months.
The “final” meeting between Juventus and Vlahovic that we heard about earlier this week took place Wednesday. And, shortly after Vlahovic was pictured zooming out of the
parking lot at Continassa, reports came out from just about every corner of the Juve and Italian media sphere that things are over between the two sides. No contract extension. No further moments of Vlahovic both reminding us of his talent and then frustrating the living hell out of us. None of that. Vlahovic is now set to leave Juventus as a free agent when his contract expires at the end of the month, with his next club still very much an unknown to those of us on the outside.
Juve will get his Serie A-high €12 million net salary off the books. But where things go after that when it comes to who is leading the line still remains to be seen.
Vlahovic, who signed with Juventus in January 2022 for a club-record fee for the winter transfer window, now hits the open market as a free agent with some big names linked to him. We heard about Bayern Munich. We hear about Barcelona. We still don’t know if any of those same names have offered him anything just yet, but those links seem to pop up every so often — and certainly will more now with him set to leave Juventus.
But these past few months have seen look like Juventus might have a legit chance to see Vlahovic return on a short-term deal that would add a couple of years onto his current deal but also see his monster salary cut in half. Well, that is at least what Juventus’ management team wanted to see happen if they were to re-sign Vlahovic. Clearly Vlahovic and his reps — most notably his dad — weren’t willing to agree to a deal on Juve’s terms, and will instead try to get anything close to what he’s gotten the last couple of years when he was far and away the highest-paid player in Serie A.
If that happens, it feels like it will be a rather large surprise to many of us.
There will be plenty more to say about Vlahovic over the coming days now that we know things are actually over between the two sides. We thought this would be the case last summer and he surprisingly stayed around. This time around, we know he’s out the door since his contract is now in its final few weeks.
The last image we will have of Vlahovic as a Juventus player will be of him celebrating a brace on a night when his team was officially eliminated from Champions League qualification and subsequently finished the 2025-26 season in sixth place.
Seems rather fitting, doesn’t it?
