Damien Comolli’s time at Juventus is over. The French director general’s adventure at the Allianz Stadium has come to an end after just one year, with the club’s ownership having made the decision to part company with him — as confirmed by journalist Matteo Moretto on Fabrizio Romano’s YouTube channel.
The news, whilst not entirely unexpected given the reports of boardroom tension that emerged earlier this week, nonetheless lands at a particularly sensitive moment — right in the middle of one of the most complex transfer windows in the club’s recent history.
Carnevali: The Successor Is Already Identified
Juventus have already identified Comolli’s replacement: Giovanni Carnevali, the highly respected chief executive of Sassuolo, is the frontrunner for the role.
Carnevali is one of the most admired figures in Italian football administration. During his long tenure at Sassuolo, he built a model of sustainable, intelligent recruitment that became the envy of Serie A — nurturing and selling players at significant profit whilst maintaining the club’s top-flight status year after year. His arrival at Juventus would represent a significant statement of intent from the Elkann family: a move away from the international, data-driven approach embodied by Comolli towards a more deeply rooted understanding of the Italian football ecosystem.
The Sassuolo connection also takes on an additional dimension given the ongoing transfer negotiations between the two clubs over Tarik Muharemovic and Vasilije Adzic — though those discussions will now need to be carefully managed to avoid any conflict of interest during any transitional period.
The Wider Context: Turbulence at the Top
The timing of this change could scarcely be more disruptive. Juventus are currently in active negotiations across multiple fronts — personal terms agreed with Dibu Martínez, a deadline-driven push for Sorloth, and exploratory talks over Lucumí, Ruggeri, Muharemovic, and several others. Comolli was the architect of all those conversations.
Whether those deals now accelerate, stall, or are reassessed entirely under new leadership remains to be seen. What is certain is that Juventus’s summer of transformation now extends well beyond the playing squad — and the real rebuild, it seems, starts at the very top.
