A lot of the recent Juventus news cycle has involved a former Fiorentina player who arrived in Turin for a lot of money and ended up leaving after not being able to come to an agreement on a new deal. However, he’s not the first player to arrive under those same kinds of circumstances only to leave in less-than-heralded fashion.
The main difference between Dusan Vlahovic and Federico Chiesa, however, is that the latter was told to leave with a year left on his contract rather than the former leaving
as his deal expired. It was the kind of exit that was incredibly unceremonious for a player who was once looked as a building block for the future but never reached the same heights following his ACL injury in January 2022.
This weekend, La Gazzetta dello Sport released an interview with Chiesa in which the Italian winger spoke about his exit from Juventus in the summer of 2024. And it was in that interview with GDS that we’ve gotten the bit of information we’ve always unofficially known — that it was never Chiesa’s desire to leave Juventus even though he was entering the final season of his contract with an uncertain future ahead. Instead, it was essentially then-sporting chief Cristiano Giuntoli and former manager Thiago Motta who told Chiesa that he was no longer part of the project and needed to find a new club.
Here is the full text of Chiea’s answer about how things went down with Giuntoli and Motta:
“Juventus is always in my heart and I would like to return. I never spoke about money with Juventus and I never will. I would have liked to stay in black and white.
“I never would have left on my own. It was also said that I was demanding a lot of money, but the truth is different, I was never offered a renewal. We never even spoke about it. Giuntoli and Thiago Motta told me: ‘Fede, we don’t need you — find yourself a club.’ Things went well for me, I restarted at one of the top five clubs in the world in Liverpool.”
“We don’t need you” is a wild declaration from a director of a squad that finished in fourth place and barely got into the Champions League that same season. By the time the 2024-25 season was over, Motta was already out of a job and Giuntoli was close to losing his job as well. The supposed project that Giuntoli tried to build around Motta lasted all of 10 months, and it’s not like he was given a second chance to try and build a successful squad like he got with Napoli. (Ironically, the man in which he was working in tandem with in Naples to bring a long-awaited Scudetto to Napoli is now the coach at Juventus.)
Chiesa, like Vlahovic, had an extended contract extension discussion that spanned over much of what proved to be his final season at Juventus. But the interesting part of the interview on top of the obvious is that Chiesa says he was never offered a new deal — which pretty much signals how Giuntoli felt about him in a post-ACL surgery world.
Of course, Chiesa has never had an extended run of good form at Liverpool. Or really an extended run of starts considering his continued injury troubles and not being a favorite of now-former manager Arne Slot.
Naturally, Chiesa was also asked about the other half of the former Fiorentina players mentioned — no, not Federico Bernardeschi — who are leaving Juventus. Chiesa said that he “would have seen (Vlahovic) at Juventus for many more years” and that “Juve lost a great No. 9.”
“Dusan is a great striker and he proved it with goals even after his last injury. I’m sorry, I would have seen him at Juventus for many more years. We need to understand what happened behind the scenes. Juve lost a great No. 9, I don’t see many like him in the world . I enjoyed playing with Dusan, he’s someone who fights on the pitch. I love him and wish him the best. Maybe in England. The Premier League is the best, everyone plays with maximum intensity and attack. If I return to Serie A, I hope you’ll see an even stronger Chiesa.”
Just two players who cost Juventus more than €120 million in fees alone now no longer on the roster within a couple of years. Two players who were viewed as building blocks of the future alongside Kenan Yildiz and others. Now, neither one of those two are going to be playing their football elsewhere later in the calendar year of 2026.
