Juventus announced Wednesday that they have signed one of their strikers to a new contract that aims to spread out his salary over one more season than previously stated.
It wasn’t the striker that you might have thought.
Juventus and Arek Milik have agreed to a contract extension through the 2006-27 season, the club has announced. It comes at a time in which the 31-year-old Polish international who first joined Juve in the summer of 2022 has yet to make an appearance this season and very much doesn’t look like he will over the course of the final month of the campaign. That means he will likely go over a year between appearances for both club and country considering his last competitive game came June 7 in a start with Poland against Ukraine — the same one where he had to come off injured after less than five minutes.
Since then, we’ve rarely seen Milik — both in training and at the Allianz Stadium.
But just as they wanted to do with Dusan Vlahovic, Juve have tacked on another year to Milik’s previous deal to spread out his salary, which is reportedly around €3.5 million net a season.
Juventus’ announcement of the Milik contract extension was … short. It reads:
Juventus has reached an agreement with Arkadiusz Milik to extend the player’s contract until 30 June 2027.
The Polish striker, who has been with the Club since August 2022, has so far scored 17 goals in the 75 matches he has played in black and white.
This contract extension doesn’t necessarily mean that Milik will end up staying with Juventus beyond this summer. There were already plenty of rumors about Juventus trying to offload Milik last summer in which so much of the roster was changed. This summer could very well see all those previous rumors become a reality.
The biggest thing that could hamper Juventus from offloading him is the same thing that has prevented him from playing a minute this season — his health.
Milik has suffered from multiple setbacks as he’s recovered from his original knee injury that required surgery last summer. He was originally expected to come back in the winter, either December or January. Then that became February. Then it became a giant question mark if he would play at all this season as February became March.
All told, when the season comes to a close, Milik will have missed over 50 games.
