The boardroom restructuring at the Continassa is complete. The defensive rebuild is under way. But it is the midfield — the very beating heart of any football team — that now represents Juventus’s most complex and pressing area of reconstruction this summer. With Luciano Spalletti’s specific demands clearly articulated, Giovanni Carnevali and new Chief Football Officer Frederic Massara face a three-pronged challenge in the engine room that will define whether the new era truly delivers.
The Assets to Resolve First
Before any meaningful incoming business can be done in midfield, Carnevali and Massara must first make order out of extraordinary chaos. The questions are numerous and they are urgent: what happens to Douglas Luiz and Arthur, both financial millstones of the highest order? Can Teun Koopmeiners attract a serious buyer after a season of profound disappointment? Is Khéphren Thuram truly sellable at €40 million? And can Vasilije Adzic and Fabio Miretti find good loan destinations before pre-season begins?
Only once those files are resolved — or at the very least meaningfully progressed — does the real work of rebuilding begin. The two immovable certainties are Manuel Locatelli and Weston McKennie. Everyone else is, in varying degrees, a question mark.
Three Players Wanted — Three Different Profiles
Against that backdrop, Juventus need three distinct midfield additions. First: a midfielder of substance and quality who can contribute both technically and physically in the box-to-box role. Second: a playmaker — whether young and developing or experienced and proven — capable of playing either as Locatelli’s deputy or alongside him. Third and most urgent of all: a trequartista who can inhabit what Spalletti famously calls “the swamp of the number ten” — the tightest, most demanding zone on the pitch, where only the most technically precise and intelligent players can thrive.
Brahim Díaz: The Obsession That Shows No Sign of Cooling
Nothing has changed about Spalletti’s desire for Brahim Díaz — if anything, the World Cup has only intensified it. Morocco’s 3-0 victory over Croatia in their quarter-final in San Diego provided the latest and most compelling evidence of Díaz’s qualities. The Moroccan is the player Spalletti calls after every game, whose clips he watches on repeat, and about whom he has spoken with a consistency bordering on fixation since the day he arrived at the Continassa. Everything else in the trequartista pursuit — Zaniolo, Gudmundsson, and others — exists only as a contingency should the Real Madrid door remain permanently closed.
Kessié: Massara’s First Call, Spalletti’s Physical Solution
For the box-to-box role, the name that has risen most sharply following Massara’s appointment is Franck Kessié. Available on a free transfer after declining to renew at Al-Ahli, the Ivorian international has a deep and trusted personal relationship with Massara stretching back to their time together at AC Milan. That relationship gives Juventus a decisive, almost unfair competitive advantage over any rival clubs. If Massara calls, Kessié listens — and the financial terms of a deal, without a transfer fee to negotiate, should be the most straightforward of any midfield target this summer.
Brozović and Matić: The Experienced Options for the Regista Role
In the search for a pure playmaker, two experienced names have emerged as concrete possibilities. Marcelo Brozović, the former Inter captain who has struggled for form and opportunity at Al-Nassr in Saudi Arabia, represents a profile with the technical pedigree and reading of the game that the position demands. Nemanja Matić — still valued despite his 36 years — is considered by Massara’s team as a dependable, technically astute option who could provide cover for Locatelli whilst contributing genuine quality on the occasions he is called upon.
Neither would be a long-term solution in the truest sense. But in a summer of financial constraints and urgent short-term needs, both offer the kind of experienced, immediately available quality that Spalletti can work with whilst the club continues to identify younger, more sustainable alternatives for future windows.
