Ah, yes, the summer doldrums.
It’s the time period to go nuts over loosely-sourced, head-grabbing articles created exclusively to get clicks, throw wild theories out there about squad construction and to pretend you have deep scout level knowledge of some fresh transfer target that you weren’t even aware existed until hours ago.
Yes, theoretically we could sign Lionel Messi on a free! It is technically possible! Does it warrant a whole lot of consideration? Very clearly not, but hey, anything is fair game when it comes to feeding the content machine.
And speaking of the aforementioned content machine, that does not change for your correspondent and your friendly neighborhood blog here at BWRAO. Given that transfer news is most of what we will be gnawing on for the foreseeable future before the new Sere A season starts up, why not take a stroll down memory lane and count down a few chosen transfers that, to put it charitably, did not quite pan out.
We will be recounting the worst transfer moves for Juventus in the last 10 seasons. And look, sometimes we are too harsh with our front office members. The art of transfers are not as cut and dry as your latest FIFA save might be. Not every flop signing is built the same as others and therefore we will not judge all the moves the same.
So, to promote fairness and transparency we will judge the moves based on this super scientific, proprietary formula to determine which moves were truly the cream of the crop of badness:
- Investment: A big-money move that flops is infinitely worse than a low-risk flier on a guy that doesn’t pan out. Investment matters, so a guy that came with a big price tag will be judged more harshly than others who might have performed worse but with less money spent.
- Team Fit: Think of this grade as if the player in question was signed with the expectation to fill a significant hole in the squad or not. If he was, his grade is going to be higher than if he was just a luxury acquisition with little expectations to provide an immediate impact.
- Performance: Simple, no? Were they good with Juventus or not. At the end of the day whether you put up or shut up matters a lot. An exception can be made here in case injuries played a big part in the performance being subpar, sometimes injuries happen and there’s not much you can do about that.
- Locker Room Drama: So, it didn’t work out, but did you at least bring a positive impact into the squad in other ways? Were you a figure of influence for younger guys? A mentor? Or did your performance on the pitch translate to disarray in the locker room too?
Every category will be graded from 1 to 5 points, with five being the worst to determine truly the worst transfer dealings of the last decade for the Bianconeri.
There’s lots to discuss, so let’s get right to it.
Let’s cook.
Honorable Mentions
Emre Can, midfielder, 2018-19 season
Transfer Fee: Free from Liverpool
A young and talented German midfielder on a free? Yes, please!
Unfortunately for Can, it was not meant to be, as he was dropped in a dysfunctional midfield situation during the last season of Max Allegri’s 1.0 era and never quite found his footing. He was quickly shipped off to Borussia Dortmund where he bounced back and became a key cog in a team that made the Champions League final a couple of years ago.
Tomas Rincón, midfielder, 2016-17 season
Transfer Fee: €8 million from Genoa
The Venezuelan international was a low-cost flier brought in during the January transfer window during Juve’s last true relevant European campaign. It wasn’t like the expectations were sky high for him when the Bianconeri signed him from a mid-table Genoa side to the thick of multiple title battles, but it was a relatively disappointing reinforcement considering that Juventus had a very real shot at a treble and you would have liked to see a little bit more of a risk in terms of bringing extra firepower.
Rincon was fine, but his Juve stay was short-lived, getting loaned to Torino the following season.
Marko Pjaca, winger, 2016-17 season
Transfer Fee: €29.4 million from Dinamo Zagreb
I hate to do it to my beloved Marko Pjaca, but I straight up forgot Juventus paid almost €30 million for the young Croat and he played for the club for less than a year. His career never recovered from two ACL injuries, so it’s not entirely his fault, but that’s a pretty steep price to pay for the very little in return they got from Pjaca.
Joao Cancelo, fullback, 2018-19 season
Transfer Fee: €40 million from Valencia
He did have one incredible first half of the 2018-19 season, I will give him that much!
Cancelo’s high-flying offensive panache brought a jolt of energy to the team during the beginning of a promising season. Inconsistency and a complete lack of defensive ability, however, made him a liability for the second half of that year and quickly fell out of favor.
His lasting legacy for the team is the fact that he got swapped for Danilo in a deal with Manchester City. Despite being looked as a relatively lackluster return at the time, Danilo ended up being a supremely productive player for Juventus and captaining the Bianconeri for a couple of seasons as well. In the end Cancelo definitely did not live up to the €40 million price tag.
Now let’s get into our Top 10, starting with some newcomers …
10. Teun Koopmeiners, midfielder, 2024-25 season
Transfer Fee: €58.4 million from Atalanta
9. Douglas Luiz, midfielder, 2024-25 season
Transfer Fee: €51.5 million from Aston Villa
In theory, these two could still turn it around. So they are the only two that make it into our ranking without grades because it could still change and there is an argument to be made that it’s too early.
I’m talking about both of these guys at the same time because their failures were markedly similar. Two of the marquee signings of the great summer splash of Cristiano Giuntoli last season were — unfortunately — two of the biggest flops we have seen.
Both were big-money transfers that came in with the hopes of finally solving the big midfield inadequacies that have plagued the club arguably since the Cardiff final. Koopmeiners was coming off a banner season in which he helped deliver Atalanta the Europa League and was a key cog in one of the best seasons in the club’s history. Luiz had an outstanding season in the Premier League as well and it earned him a starting nod for the Brazilian national team in that summer’s Copa America.
While they were a very good fit in Thiago Motta’s system in theory, they were both consistently outplayed by Manuel Locatelli and Khephren Thuram and neither of them ever managed to re-establish themselves once they got relegated to the bench.
Koopmeiners was given plenty of chances to play all over the field under Motta, but the results remained consistently underwhelming until an injury late in the season finished his season.
Luiz ranks higher only because he managed to underwhelm just as much — if not more — than Koopmeiners, but had the added benefit of generating a mini-controversy when he was spotted leaving a nightclub late in the night during Juve’s worst spell of the season while he was nursing a minor injury.
Again, they are still Juventus players and there is a chance that under new coach Igor Tudor they bounce back and go back to the form they have showed in previous stops, but all things considered the early returns have been as bad as it gets.
8. Federico Bernardeschi, winger, 2017-18 season
Transfer Fee: €40 million from Fiorentina
Investment: 3/5
Team Fit: 2/5
Performance: 3/5
Locker Room Drama: 1/5
Total: 9 Points
With all due respect to friend of the blog handyvandy, Bernardeschi was the first big-money flop from Fiorentina of recent memory … and unfortunately not the last.
Brought in during the aftermath of the Cardiff loss, Bernardeschi was supposed to naturally fit into Allegri’s five-star system as one of the wide players with fellow 2017 signee Douglas Costa. While he initially played adequately, the defeat against Real Madrid along with the quick deterioration of Sami Khedira forced Allegri to quickly ditch the formation and Bernardeschi became a man without a position.
He deambulated between the wings, midfield and even a short stint as fullback while failing to really establish himself in any of those roles. His last chance came under Maurizio Sarri and while he had a couple shining moments — the Atletico Madrid second leg, for example — he finished the season with over 40 appearances, most of them coming from the wings and he had more yellow cards than goals created. Pretty rough stuff.
Bernardeschi was exiled to Major League Soccer in the summer of 2022. After a reasonably productive stint with Toronto FC, he has recently returned to Italy and officially signed with Bologna as their new No. 10.
7. Hernanes, midfielder, 2015-16 season
Transfer Fee: €13 million from Inter Milan
Investment: 2/5
Team Fit: 3/5
Performance: 4/5
Locker Room Drama: 1/5
Total: 10 Points
Did I make this whole list just to remember how crappy the Hernanes signing was? Was the 10-year cutoff line a neat, round number or just enough so our old Brazilian pal could make an appearance? That is up for you to decide.
(Yes, the answer to both is yes.)
One of the many low-risk lottery tickets that the Juventus regime took in order to fix the midfield and give Allegri his much-desired trequartista, the peculiarity with Hernanes is that we knew he wasn’t going to pan out from the jump. I can’t remember many cases in which universally the consensus was that this was a poor attempt at solving a glaring problem.
Hernanes played sparingly during two seasons in which he accrued 35 appearances and all of two goals in all competitions.
(To be fair to himm, one of those was a banger and his celebration had a lot of panache. If you are going to score once a year might as well make it count.)
There was nothing more terrifying than to see him start during a big match during that spell and thanks to the quickly deteriorating midfield during his two seasons that was unfortunately more often than you would have liked.
6. Aaron Ramsey, midfielder, 2019-20 season
Transfer Fee: Free from Arsenal
Investment: 1/5
Team Fit: 4/5
Performance: 4/5
Locker Room Drama: 1/5
Total: 10 Points
Man, we took a lot of swings and misses in midfield, huh?
There’s three good things that can be said about Ramsey’s stint in black and white: this video and the fantastic “Mamma Mia!” meme that it spawned:
That one game he had in the early Andrea Pirlo era where he looked like the second coming of Zinedine Zidane and the fact he came on a free. Ramsey was mostly injured during his time in Italy, and whenever he was not, his contributions in the pitch were mostly unremarkable.
He had 70 appearances over two years — which sound like a lot, but Ramsey only accrued a smidge over 3,000 minutes and four (4!!!) complete games during his two seasons for Juventus, coming in mostly as a late game sub or receiving early hooks whenever he was deemed fit to start.
Similarly to Hernanes, this was another guy that came in with a ton of questions about whether he was good enough to make a difference and, just like our Brazilian friend, he did little to beat those allegations.
5. Leonardo Bonucci, center back, 2018-19 season
Transfer Fee: €35 million from AC Milan
Investment: 3/5
Team Fit: 3/5
Performance: 3/5
Locker Room Drama: 3/5
Total: 12 Points
Just one year after a very acrimonious exit from Juventus after the Cardiff final, Bonucci was brought back after an unsuccessful season with AC Milan in which his prickly personality and underperformance earned him a quick exit from the Milanese side.
Bonucci was not necessarily welcomed back in Turin with open arms. When he departed he burned quite a few bridges, especially with a manager in Allegri with whom he had several public disagreements and spats. To Bonucci’s bad luck, when he came back Allegri was still the manager of the club and while both said all the right things, it was clear the relationship was pretty uneasy.
Bonucci never quite returned to his peak BBC form in his second stint for Juventus. The aging of Giorgio Chiellini and Andrea Barzagli as well as a natural step back by the Italian himself exposed a lot of his weaknesses as a defender. While he was a starter, his form fluctuated between average to slightly below average for most of his time with the club, which wasn’t terrible but far from the bar he had set prior to the move.
On the leadership side, he did take the captain’s armband under Sarri and Pirlo, but his leadership style never really quite resonated with the rest of his teammates and he oversaw the beginning of the (still ongoing) Juve decline after the heights of the title streak.
4. Mathijs de Ligt, center back, 2019-20 season
Transfer Fee: €85.5 million from Ajax
Investment: 5/5
Team Fit: 3/5
Performance: 2/5
Locker Room Drama: 1/5
Total: 11 Points
A couple of weeks I finally let it go. And by it, I mean a number of my old Juventus jerseys that even in the most optimistic weight-losing scenario were just not going to fit me ever again.
(I ended up selling them at a boutique Mexico City shop called “El Jugador Numero 12” which sells all sorts of vintage kits. Worth a visit, if you are ever around.)
One of those kits was a de Ligt jersey and much like the player himself, all I felt was a bit of disappointment at what could have been.
(In the shirt case, I should have sized up. It was that steel blue kit from a few years ago, one of the better adidas designs, bummer.)
Out of this entire list, de Ligt was probably the player who played the best during his time with Juventus. Brought in as the heir apparent to Juve’s aging backline after a terrific season captaining a precocious Ajax side, de Ligt quickly became a starter for the team and the future looked bright for the young Dutch international.
He’s only on this list because of two reasons. He was always good, but he never quite took the next step towards super stardom. With the price tag the he came with and the massive expectations considering his age and potential, the fact that de Ligt consistently remained between good and very good but never great has to be considered a bit of a let down. Think about it, was de Ligt ever as consistently good as Bremer? Probably not.
(De Ligt is shockingly still 25 years old, so who knows, but if his stints with Manchester United and Bayern Munich are any indication we might be looking at a textbook case of a guy who peaked too young.)
The second is that his Juve stint was pretty short lived. Both due to the COVID pandemic and Juve’s general dysfunction, de Ligt quickly sought greener pastures in the Bundesliga and the heir apparent of the BBC played less than three years in black and white.
3. Paul Pogba, midfielder, 2022-23 season
Transfer Fee: Free from Manchester United
Investment: 1/5
Team Fit: 4/5
Performance: 5/5
Locker Room Drama: 4/5
Total: 14 Points
The initial signing of Paul Pogba was one of the best signings of the last decade as Juventus stole him from Manchester United in 2012 and Pogba blossomed into one of the best midfielders in the world.
Well, the second time Juventus got Pogba for free the result was significantly different. It’s shocking to see the final counting numbers for the Pogback 2.0. Ten total appearances, barely over 200 minutes played and one assist in two seasons.
His injuries zapped him of any chance at contributing during his first year back and a completely absurd, idiotic doping scandal killed his second season before it got much of a chance to start in the first place. Almost nobody on this list made a lesser impact than Pogba did during his second stint at Juventus, and while the injuries have to be taken into account, the fact that he killed any chance at redemption through a doping suspension is enough to give him more points in the locker room drama category and the performance.
2. Dusan Vlahovic, striker, 2021-22 season
Transfer Fee: €83.5 million from Fiorentina
Investment: 5/5
Team Fit: 5/5
Performance: 4/5
Locker Room Drama: 2/5
Total: 16 Points
I’ve spilled plenty of digital ink in my dislike of Dusan Vlahovic.
To recap: Juventus paid an exorbitant transfer fee and gave him a contract that made him the highest-paid player in the league, and all of this for Vlahovic to never score over 20 goals in a season for the team. You know who did? Alvaro Morata, the same guy Juventus thought was too inconsistent to lead the attack and who had 20 goals with 12 assists in the year before Vlahovic was signed.
(A season, by the way, that Vlahovic was never close to touching during his black and white stint.)
Despite his considerable talents, Vlahovic was incapable of being consistent enough to establish himself as the top striker in the league. He disappeared from games far too often, struggled with his first touch and was a good bet to miss good chances pretty much every single game. For a team that struggled to generate offensive opportunities, a wasteful striker only worsened the situation.
Under Motta, Vlahovic was theoretically set to succeed with a more offensively inclined coach and plenty of playmakers. Instead of finally breaking out, Vlahovic had his worst season, ineffective during an up and down first half and mostly relegated to the bench once Kolo Muani was signed on loan during the January transfer window.
His contract is so toxic and his failure as a Juventus player so bad, that there is genuine talk about rescinding his contract for the following season or freezing him out for next year. Juventus are willing to just bite the bullet and be done with it, rather than keep trotting out their No. 9 out there.
1. Arthur Melo, midfielder, 2020-21 season
Transfer Fee: €80.6 million from Barcelona
Investment: 5/5
Team Fit: 4/5
Performance: 5/5
Locker Room Drama: 3/5
Total: 17 Points
Juventus paid over €80 million for Arthur Melo, a player who we have no real evidence is good.
I understand that those figures are a bit overblown due to financial shenanigans related to the deal that saw Miralem Pjanic go to Barcelona and Arthur come back in return … but still. Juventus, in essence, traded a fading but still viable and beloved midfielder in Pjanic for the embodiment of uselessness — and paid more for that privilege.
But, hey, we can’t say we didn’t see it coming.
As Arthur was gearing towards his move to Juventus, he was arrested for a drunk driving incident after crashing his Ferrari in Barcelona. It somehow got worse from there as the Brazilian underwhelmed in two seasons for Juventus in a team that was in desperate need of anything resembling a holding midfielder.
He’s bounced around Liverpool, Fiorentina and Girona the following three years and thanks to a renegotiated deal to lower his astronomical wages, Juventus are on the hook for another couple of years for the Arthur Melo experience. It’s truly a disaster class in transfer dealings and a very worthy pick of the worst transfer in the last decade of Juventus football.
