As the beginning of the 2024-25 season seems to fast approaching, it’s not exactly the same when it comes to Juventus’ final steps to sign Atalanta midfielder Teun Koopmeiners.
Things have been at what feels like a crawl all summer, with a multitude of reasons — available money, Atalanta’s demands, a Koopmeiners replacement being secured — causing Juve’s No. 1 transfer target still not on the roster just a couple of days before the new year kicks off.
Inching forward. Slowly but hopefully surely.
That essentially translates to getting closer to and closer to Atalanta’s asking price for Koopmeiners, which looks like it’s about to be one of the most expensive deals Juventus will have ever made.
According to Fabrizio Romano on Thursday, Juventus submitted their latest bid for Koopmeiners to Atalanta — upping things to €52 million with €7 million with ad-ones. That is just shy of the desired €60 million valuation that La Dea has for their 26-year-old Dutchman.
The payment structure of the deal could end up being somewhat complex as Juve try and negotiate such a large transfer fee. Corriere dello Sport suggest Juve could pay around €15 million up front to Atalanta, with the rest of the fee spread out over the next three or four years. The bonuses would also be rather easy to achieve, thus allowing Atalanta to get as close to their desired price tag as they so desire.
So, this is a reported bid that is potentially €1 million less than what we’ve heard Atalanta wants for Koopmeiners and the first thing that popped into my head was “How petting is Atalanta going to be when it comes to actually accepting this one?” That is because Atalanta manager Gian Piero Gasperini and some of their higher-ups have done a fair bit of talking over the last week about the entire Koopmeiners situation and their dissatisfaction with it all.
Plus, as we know, Italian clubs certainly love to milk Juventus for every single euro they can potentially get on the transfer market.
The bid worth €55 million had me thinking that Atalanta couldn’t turn it down , and yet …. they apparently did just that. So now, Juventus has had to reportedly add a couple of millions onto both the flat transfer fee as well as the bonuses. At this rate, you just want Juventus to get it done as soon as possible — and yes, of course, Atalanta are going to secure their Koopmeiners replacement before selling him to Juventus even though he currently isn’t training with the squad — and give Thiago Motta the player he so clearly has wanted to be a huge piece of his squad ever since the day he arrived in Turin.
Maybe it’s done in a few hours. Maybe it’s a few days. But, at this point, Juve just need to get the Koopmeiners deal done so that we can talk about him actually taking the field in bianconero.
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