Everything is on the table. Everything is in play. As the final twelve days of the transfer window unfold simultaneously with the start of the Serie A season, Juventus are working every viable angle in their search for the physical centre-forward that Luciano Spalletti has explicitly and repeatedly requested. The profile is clear: powerful, dominant in the air, capable of making the decisive difference in those moments when vertical football becomes impossible and the team needs someone to simply hold the ball and impose themselves. And now, in the window’s final phase, a name long associated with Spalletti and sporting director Marco Ottolini has resurfaced with renewed if complicated force: Mateo Retegui.
Why Retegui Is Complicated — but Why the Connections Are Real
The obstacles around a potential Retegui deal are considerable. The Italian international is currently recovering from a tibia fracture that disrupted his time with the Italian national team. His wages at Al-Qadisiyya — approximately €20 million per year on a contract with two remaining years — are so far beyond Juventus’s parameters as to make a direct transfer essentially impossible. Whether a loan could be structured is the central question, and it is a difficult one.
And yet the connections are real and numerous. Spalletti knows Retegui intimately — the striker was his go-to number nine for the Italian national team, the player he trusted to lead the attack in the most important fixtures. Ottolini worked with Retegui at Genoa, where the coach and the striker developed the kind of mutual admiration that outlasts any particular club relationship. When Roberto Mancini returned to take charge of Italy this summer — the manager who originally spotted and selected Retegui before anyone else — the Italian international’s motivation to return to Serie A and re-establish himself in the national team picture has intensified significantly. He has already scored a couple of goals in friendly competition, announcing himself ready.
Whether a loan deal can be negotiated — persuading Al-Qadisiyya to release a player earning €20 million per year for a club that cannot match those wages — remains improbable. But as Tuttosport’s Cristiano Corbo notes, if the right combination of financial arrangements and personal relationships falls into place in the window’s final days, the impossible has a way of becoming merely very difficult.
The Others: Zirkzee Leads, Sorloth Waits, the Window Decides
The more realistic alternatives remain those already established throughout the summer. Zirkzee is Massara’s priority — the deal he has wanted since his Roma days, a loan from Manchester United that remains contingent on Jonathan David’s departure. Sorloth of Atletico Madrid is the other concrete option, his personal terms with Juventus agreed since June, though the linked Nico González exchange has yet to reach a conclusion that satisfies all parties.
Beyond those two, the window’s final hours may yet produce surprises entirely unforeseen by the morning’s reporting. The market accelerates in its final days, priorities shift, and opportunities emerge from unexpected directions. For Carnevali, Massara, and Ottolini — three directors who know both the art and the science of this particular game better than most — the next twelve days will require every lesson they have accumulated across their respective careers.
The season begins on Sunday. The striker question has not yet found its answer. And Mateo Retegui, broken tibia and Saudi wages notwithstanding, has walked back into the frame through the most human of doors: the ones built by trust, admiration, and years of shared professional history.
