Juventus is one of the clubs that discovered Erling Haaland before he shot to fame as one of the best strikers in the world.
The Norwegian now stars for Manchester City in the Premier League and cannot seem to stop scoring.
Juve was made aware of his potential earlier in his career and the football agent Vincenzo Morabito reveals they even struck a deal with his then club Molde to sign him.
Everything was agreed upon with the Bianconeri looking to send him to their under-23 team in Serie C or another club to develop further.
However, they couldn’t find a place for him to move to for the furtherance of his development.
Eventually, Beppe Marotta considered the deal too expensive and pulled the plug.
“It was all done, but there was a question that called everything: ‘Where will he go?’”, Morabito told Calciomercato.it via Football Italia.
“Beppe Marotta thought he was too expensive so he said no.”
Juve FC Says
Haaland only had potential at Molde and there was no guarantee that he would have reached these heights if he had moved to Juve.
The striker has developed into a top talent now and we missed out on signing him, but there is no need beating ourselves up over not bringing him to Italy earlier.
Marotta was a fenomonal team builder and a bargain hunter. He got Barzagli, Vidal, Pirlo, Pogba and Tevez for free or for peanuts. He got Lichsteiner, Asamoah, Dybala, Morata and others who was integral for Juves success over many years. But he also played cheap on several deals which made Juve loose out on Veratti and A. Sanchez among others. I would take him back anytime though.
He was against spending big on Higuain, CR and rightly so. Those two deals didn’t have any long term value financially and on the field and are partly to blame for where we r now. Verratti was another case of “It’s not worth spending 11M on an italian talent”. Haaland – agent fees, no long term plan (Mino’s boy)..Juve should have gone the Pogba route here though.