Beppe Marotta talks Buffon, Chiellini, Vidal, Pogba

Juventus general manager Beppe Marotta gave a lenghty interview with Tuttosport where he revealed both Gigi Buffon and Giorgio Chiellini rejected overseas moves.

“The problem is that, apart from a few exceptions like Atletico Madrid, the rule is that the top Champions League places go to clubs with huge revenues. Today’s Bayern Munich, in my view, are simply unbeatable. We want to put ourselves in a stable position among the top eight European clubs. At the moment that’s all that matters.”

“When Buffon renewed his contract, he had a wage proposal from a foreign club worth €10m net! Gigi actually cut his wages to continue with us. The same is true of Chiellini, who over the summer had the opportunity to go abroad with a substantial contract, but decided to renew with us.”

Arturo Vidal was linked with Manchester United and Real Madrid in the summer, but the Chile international remained in Turin.

“We didn’t want to give Vidal to Manchester United, end of story. Besides, our rapport with his agent Fernando Felicevich is good. As for Pogba, we have just renewed his contract. He was on very small wages and so we improved his salary. It always depends on the player: if Pogba and Vidal are happy to stay, then we will keep them.”

Marotta also addressed the ongoing issue of contract extensions including the possibility of Giovinco leaving Juventus and renewing Lichtsteiners contract.

“We had to some contacts to see if there are the premises to extend his contract on our terms. If we’ll do that fine, otherwise Giovinco needs to tell us what he wants to do. We didn’t receive a request from Torino, now or in the summer. Lichtsteiner ? We’re negotiating, but we want to respect our parameters.”

Marotta went on to discuss the possibility of co-owned player returning to Turin.

“We know that these are expensive deals, we’ll make some choices. An operation like the Immobile one, whom we never managed directly and where we made money move, mustn’t be overlooked. We could sell one between Zaza and Gabbiadini, for instance. We control 64 players, 11 of them in Serie A and 13 abroad. We have 24 in Serie B and the oldest one is 25. If the second teams existed, everything would be easier: we could groom some elements on our own, like Rugani, for instance, who would have already debuted in Champions League at this point. We’d instil immediately a winning mentality. It would also be an opportunity to forge coaches like Guardiola that pass from the second team to the first one. But the Italian system doesn’t understand that.”

There are reports over January reinforcements, but Marotta warned it’s about quality, not quantity.

“If there are players who can increase the quality of the squad, then we will consider them, but there’s nothing to say that promise will be a guarantee. It’s not easy to find players worthy of Juve and we don’t want to become some refuge for any old out of contract figure. Having said all that, Dani Alves is certainly a very good player.”

Finally, he spoke about this seasons title race and AS Roma.

“We think that we’re stronger than in the past season and if we won last season… The equation is easy to solve. I’m aware that we are stronger than in the past season. Surely Roma is stronger than in the last season, but Juventus are more aware of their strength. They both improved, even though we didn’t create any gap from the others. Surely we’re in good position.”

[Translation by Enrico Passarella]