Why Juventus’ transfer strategy differs from other European giants

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€173m of loanees 

©TM/IMAGO

Juventus are one of only eight clubs to spend over €100 million on a single player in the history of football. And while the Old Lady remain the biggest spenders in Italy, they’ve also adopted a new approach in their attempts to avoid the financial peril that’s plagued the club in recent seasons after their Serie A dominance ended. Juventus are the most successful Italian club with 36 Scudetto’s to their name and ruled Serie A for almost a decade, winning nine consecutive titles between 2012 and 2020.

Juve, however, haven’t won the title across the last four seasons despite spending wildly to regain the Scudetto. Across the last five seasons, Juventus have spent €250m more than any Italian club but their reckless spending led to losses of €208m during the 2023-24 season after they were banned from European competition for breaking UEFA’s Financial Fair Play rules. Juventus’ spending wasn’t sustainable despite their financial advantage over Italian club’s given their history and success and loan signings have been central to their approach this season.

Juventus have most valuable collection of loan players in the world

Juventus were still the biggest spenders in Italy last summer with €193m invested in new players but interestingly they’ve also amassed the most valuable collection of loan players across the top five leagues. Juventus currently have seven loan players in their squad with a combined market value of €173m.

As the graphic above illustrates, that’s higher than any other club in the top five leagues by €43m with Fiorentina ranking second. Four of Juventus’ current loanees arrived in the summer – Francisco Conceição, Nico González, Pierre Kalulu and Michele Di Gregorio – while Randal Kolo Muani, Lloyd Kelly and Renato Veiga arrived during the winter. While loans are more commonplace in Italy than other European top five leagues – especially between clubs – Juventus’ strategy is in stark contrast to other top clubs on the continent. Increasingly, major clubs are avoiding the loan market to implement long-term strategies and Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United, PSG and Real Madrid have no loan players on their books.

So why are Juventus so reliant on loan deals this season in comparison to other European giants? Transfermarkt’s Jatin Dietl, Serie A expert and Italian area manager, explains: “It’s mainly due to two factors. Firstly, accounting reasons as players like Gonzales, Kelly, and Di Gregorio are 100% Juventus players, even though their official signing will only happen next summer. As for Veiga and Kolo Muani, Juventus had to fill two gaps in the winter caused by the injuries in defence as well as Arkadiusz Milik’s injury in attack (in addition to the issues with Dušan Vlahović). However, because so much had already been invested in the summer, there was barely any budget left, so they had to rely on cheaper loan players. Additionally, they would like to sign Dávid Hancko from Feyenoord in the summer for the defense. As for Kolo Muani, despite the lack of a clause, they hope to be able to keep him.”

How are Juventus performing this season?

Thiago Motta’s maiden season at the Turin giants has shown signs of promise but the campaign has been littered with too many draws. Juve have drawn an incredible 13 of their 25 games in Serie A – that’s comfortably more drawn games than any other top five league club. Juventus’ 1-0 win over rivals Inter Milan on Sunday emphasised the potential in the squad and they’ll be considerably closer to the league winners this season than last – they finished in third, 23 points behind Inter. Realistically, Juventus are too far behind leaders Napoli – ten points – to be considered involved in the title race with 11 games to go but securing Champions League is imperative to avoid the aforementioned financial problems of the past. Juventus are well-placed to qualify for the last 16 of this season’s competition as they travel to Netherlands on Wednesday night to face PSV with a 2-1 advantage from the first leg.