Translated by

Juventus, the Vlahovic illusion, a winner only at the till, but a replacement is still missing

No Premier League or La Liga, the Serb is heading to Besiktas on a lucrative salary

Now that he has found a new team, we can finally draw a definitive balance sheet on who Dusan Vlahovic was for Juventus, and what he represented. In the end, it is fair to call him a major disappointment, or at the very least a big illusion.

Juventus certainly bought into that illusion when they signed him from Fiorentina in January 2022 for €70 million plus €10 million in bonuses, while also guaranteeing him a huge salary that, as it rose, would eventually even reach €12 million per season. By signing a 22-year-old who had made 108 appearances and scored 49 goals for Fiorentina, Juventus thought they had landed a generational striker, someone capable of carrying the team and making the difference. He was not.

Of course, Vlahovic deserves one mitigating factor: he arrived at one of the worst Juventus sides in the club's history. In four and a half years in the Juventus world, everything happened: a president (Agnelli) and an entire board swept away by an investigation, a string of changes in the hierarchy unlike anything previously seen in the club's history (Arrivabene, Cherubini, Giuntoli, Comolli and finally Carnevali and Massara), not to mention the managers. At Juventus, Vlahovic played under Allegri, Motta, Tudor and Spalletti, before finally reuniting with Italiano, the manager who had got the best out of him at Fiorentina and whom he has now joined again at Besiktas.

In any case, quite apart from the chaos at Juve in recent years, it should really have been down to Vlahovic, and a few others, to show they were champions capable of making the difference regardless, and of dragging the team out of the quicksand. Vlahovic only did that in part: aside from his 68 goals in 168 matches, the number 9 was often undone by his own nerves and frustrations, and by technical limitations he never managed to improve, particularly his first touch and his link-up play in tight spaces with his team-mates. For all his powerful and accurate shooting, Vlahovic leaves Juventus with just one trophy in the cabinet, the 2024 Coppa Italia, won thanks to his goal in the final against Atalanta.
Vlahovic's next move also shows he has not become the champion Juventus had hoped for. For months, if not years, the Serbian had aimed higher, with talk of the Premier League, Arsenal in particular, or Barcelona and Bayern Munich. In the end, none of those clubs came in for him. At 26, and for the next three years, right in the central and most important phase of his career, Vlahovic has to settle for the Turkish league. We say this, of course, with the utmost respect for Besiktas and Turkish football, which in this period are richer and more competitive than Italian football. But they are not the Premier League or La Liga, which were Vlahovic's dreams.

ENJOYED THIS STORY?

Add GOAL.com as a preferred source on Google to see more of our reporting

Add as preferred source on Google

From a contractual point of view, the Belgrade-born 2000 falls absolutely on his feet: in Istanbul he will earn €10 million net per season plus bonuses and a substantial signing-on fee. On that front, he and his entourage come out of it as clear winners. Juventus, by contrast, are still yet to find Vlahovic's replacement, because Kolo Muani is a mobile forward who likes to drift across the entire attacking line, not a classic penalty-box centre-forward.