The man who first placed his trust in Kerim Alajbegovic has spoken — and his verdict on the teenager who has just become one of the most exciting signings in Juventus’s recent history is as emphatic as it is considered.
Thomas Letsch, the 57-year-old German manager who handed Alajbegovic his professional debut at Red Bull Salzburg last season, spoke to Tuttosport on the occasion of the Bosnian’s move to Turin — and his words paint the portrait of a player whose ceiling, in the right hands, is extraordinary.
“He Fully Repaid My Trust — I Never Had Any Doubts”
“He fully repaid my trust in him,” Letsch said. “I had no doubts about that whatsoever. He is a great talent — a young man who is genuinely open to learning. His improvement has been constant, and it brought him to earn a place in the national team and to participate in the World Cup in the United States.”
The phrasing is telling. “Open to learn” is not an incidental compliment in the vocabulary of a professional manager — it is the description of a specific and relatively rare quality: a player who combines natural talent with the coachability that allows that talent to be properly developed and directed.
“He Can Reach Musiala and Wirtz — He Has Those Qualities”
The comparison that will generate the most discussion arrives in Letsch’s assessment of the heights Alajbegovic could ultimately reach. He placed the Bosnian teenager in the same conversation as Jamal Musiala of Bayern Munich and Florian Wirtz of Bayer Leverkusen — two of the most celebrated attacking midfielders of their generation in European football.
The reference points are not chosen arbitrarily. Like Musiala and Wirtz, Alajbegovic combines exceptional technical quality in tight spaces with the ability to arrive at goal from behind the striker, a directness that makes him difficult to contain in one-on-one situations, and an intelligence in reading the game that is rare in a teenager. His 13 goals and 4 assists in 44 appearances for Salzburg represent exactly the kind of statistical return that gives substance to those comparisons.
“Spalletti Will Know How to Make Him Coexist with Yıldız”
The most practically relevant passage of Letsch’s assessment concerns the tactical challenge that will define Alajbegovic’s first months at the Continassa: how does Spalletti make room for him in a system that already contains Kenan Yıldız as its creative heartbeat?
Letsch’s confidence in Spalletti’s ability to solve that puzzle was total. The Italian manager’s track record of nurturing and maximising technically gifted young players in demanding systems — from Lorenzo Insigne at Napoli to Khvicha Kvaratskhelia in his final Napoli season — gives Letsch every reason for optimism that Alajbegovic and Yıldız can not only coexist but actively enhance each other.
Whether in a 4-2-3-1 with Alajbegovic at number ten behind Kolo Muani, or in a fluid 4-3-3 variant that gives both players freedom to interchange, the tactical creativity available to Spalletti with this group is significantly greater than anything he has commanded since arriving in Turin. For a manager who knows exactly what he wants from the swamp of the trequarti, the arrival of Alajbegovic is the closest thing to a dream signing this summer has produced.
