Juventus landed Dusan Vlahovic and Denis Zakaria down the stretch in January, but they played on multiple tables in the last week of the window. While they arranged the sales of Rodrigo Bentancur and Dejan Kulusevski to Tottenham, the Spurs tried to hijack their acquisition of the Fiorentina star right until he put pen to paper, Romeo Agresti reports.
The Bianconeri are fully satisfied with Zakaria, but they pursued Bruno Guimaraes first. They opened talks with Olympique Lyonnais before Newcastle swooped in. They tried to get to his €45/50M evaluation through swaps or peculiar formulas. The Old Lady offered Bentancur and Arthur, but their wages were too high for the French club, the transfer market expert relays. The Magpies ultimately outbid them, and they moved on to the ex-Borussia Moenchengladbach midfielder.
Anthony Martial was the plan B for Juventus if they could not acquire Vlahovic in January. They sort of reserved the player for a couple of weeks. He eventually joined Sevilla late. He would have moved to Turin without the blockbuster signing, the Goal.com’s correspondent informs.
Alvaro Morata ended up staying put, as it was either Barcelona or Juventus for him in January. The Blaugrana could not reach agreement with the Colchoneros since they did not commit to buying him out after the loan spell. Arsenal made an attempt for him, but the player rejected it, Agresti informs. The Spaniard was not keen on going back to the Premier League. Then, the Catalans signed Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang from the Gunners.