As much as Giovanni Carnevali’s time as Juventus CEO and General Manager has been short thus far, we can probably say that one thing is already true about the Bianconeri’s new sporting chief: He ain’t afraid to say what is on his mind and how things are going.
That probably isn’t a surprise considering how how operated things at Sassuolo, and things are very much looking to be the same kind of way during his first couple of weeks since moving from Emilia-Romagna to Turin.
There is no proof more true
than that over the last week or so since Carnevali has been speaking in the press about Juventus’ talks with Paris Saint-Germain to try and bring Randal Kolo Muani back to Turin. And it became even more prevalent on Monday when Carnevali spoke on RAI GR Parlamento radio.
“Kolo Muani? The demands are too high, so either we reach an agreement, or we will turn to a different player. The asking price is over €45 million. Today, signing is easy, you just have to spend, but the numbers are high.
“The cost of players is growing constantly, with figures that are practically impossible, while Serie A club revenue cannot keep up with the likes of the Premier League. We need to reduce costs and have an economic balance, which is difficult to achieve. There’s no point denying it, you can all see that our league is in a situation of stasis for the transfer market.”
You don’t need to know more about where things stand when it comes to talks with PSG than that first sentence. The rest of the above quote are either assumptions we’ve made about the current state of Juventus or things we’ve all pretty much known. But it’s the first sentence, the one where he says both how much PSG are demanding and what he thinks of that figure that makes you now realize that
Kolo Muani is a good player, but he’s not somebody worth €45 million in this current economic climate for Juventus. At 27 years old — and just a few months away from being 28 a couple of weeks before Christmas — it would be a rather sizable investment for somebody that may pretty much have reached his ceiling even if he comes back to a club in which he’s been wanting to come back to for over a year now.
But Carnevali has drawn the line and is now going public with that very fact. He ain’t afraid to say it, either.
