As Saturday turned to the early minutes of Sunday in Italy, we got the alerts on social media that Juventus have agreed to a deal to bring in a little more depth up front. No, it’s not the striker that the Bianconeri front office has been searching for all January, but a name that is familiar to at least a couple of current Juventus players.
According to just about everybody in the Italian media, Juventus have agreed to a deal for Nice winger Jérémie Boga that will see the former Sassuolo and Atalanta
man arrive on an initial loan deal with a relatively small option to buy come the summertime. That option to buy’s price is around €5 million, according to Fabrizio Romano, and will remain an option regardless of what the 29-year-old Boga does over the next few months in bianconero as he will likely be the backup to Kenan Yildiz that Juventus had been hoping to add during the winter transfer window.
Boga will be in Turin on Sunday to complete his medical exams and sign his contract with Juventus.
Boga played in Serie A from 2018 until he moved from Atalanta to Nice in the summer of 2023. He was a teammate of Juventus captain Manuel Locatelli’s at Sassuolo, then was a teammate of Khephren Thuram’s for a season before the French midfielder made his own move to Turin in the summer of 2024.
Now, Boga returns to a league he knows well with the hopes of trying to get more minutes than he had been getting through the first half of the season at Nice when he was usually used as an option off the bench. In 14 appearances in Ligue 1 this season, Boga made seven starts and played a total of 646 minutes. He scored two goals and recorded a pair of assists in those 14 appearances.
In early December, Boga and Nice teammate Terem Moffi were put on short-term leave after they were allegedly assaulted by Nice supporters during their return from a 3-1 defeat to Lorient. According to ESPN, two Nice supporters were able to essentially force their way onto the Nice team bus and “expressed their anger” while the players were still present. Things quickly turned violent before the players were able to get off the bus and find safe haven. “The pair were both punched, spat at, kicked and insulted by the Ultras, according to people who were at the scene,” the ESPN report from French correspondent Julien Laurens said.
Boga’s last appearance for Nice was that Nov. 30 loss to Lorient.
At Juventus, his likely role seems pretty easy to figure out: deputize Yildiz so that Juventus’ budding star of a No. 10 doesn’t get run into the ground because there’s simply no other option to play on the left in Luciano Spalletti’s 4-2-3-1 formation that he has transitioned to in recent weeks. With so many fixtures over the next six weeks, he probably won’t have to wait long to potentially see action as he tries to regain some match fitness following two months away from game action with Nice.
