The long wait for Juventus to hire a new sporting director appears to be finally set to reach its official end.
According to just about all of the big-name reporters and sports media outlets in Italy on Monday night, Juventus have verbally agreed to a deal to bring in former Genoa director Marco Ottolini as the club’s new sporting director. It would be a return to Turin for Ottolini, who worked for Juventus from 2018 to 2022 as he was in charge of handling and following the players in which the Bianconeri
have sent out on loan. Since then, he had joined Genoa only to leave a turbulent three-year spell at the Marassi in which there was plenty of off-field drama having to do with ownership issues back in October.
Since leaving Genoa two months ago, Ottolini had been one of the main names to be linked to Juve’s vacant sporting director job, with then-general manager and current CEO Damien Comolli handling most of the transfer business that the club did during the summer window.
But with Ottolini now set to join the club, it looks like the yet-to-be-filled role — arguably the most important that Juve hadn’t filled following the summer front office changes — will now get its long-awaited hire.
According to ilBianconero, Ottolini’s arrival will be made official in the next few days — which is obviously an important development considering the winter transfer window opens in just over a week and Juventus are expected to be in the market to address depth issues due to injuries in a couple of areas of the field.
Ottolini, 45, will fill a major void that has been empty ever since Juventus parted ways with Cristiano Giuntoli following the disappointing showing in the 2024-25 season in which he tried to revolutionize the entire squad with the arrival of Thiago Motta. It’s been a major waiting game to see when Juve would actually hire a new sporting director, with a host of names linked with the club during the summer months and now into the fall. Ottolini’s name first popped up as the “leading candidate” back in October right before he left Genoa.
You can probably say those two things were connected.
So now Ottolini is going to arrive at a time in which Juve’s showing signs of life under Luciano Spalletti but still have some very important roster decisions to make when it comes to the future of some of the roster’s bigger names. There’s still Kenan Yildiz’s contract extension to get done as soon as possible, too — which is going to be a talking point as he continues to show the star-level talent that he has and doesn’t become one of the squad’s highest-paid players. Plus, just because of the timing of his arrival, it’s going to be the January transfer window immediately in the focus, and that will be a big thing to monitor just how active Juve might be able to be despite what Comolli has previously said will be a somewhat limited time due to Financial Fair Play reasons.
But, finally, Juventus are about to have a sporting director again. That is something we haven’t been able to say for what has turned out to be much of the 2025 calendar year — and much longer than probably anybody thought following Giuntoli’s departure.
