Saturday, June 20, 2009

Juve suffer Spanish setback


Juventus’ hopes of signing Mahamadou Diarra of Real Madrid and Villarreal’s Giuseppe Rossi have already suffered a blow.

Alessio Secco, the club’s sporting director, held talks with both sides yesterday during his trip to Spain and made little progress in snapping up the duo.

Juve wanted to sign Diarra on a loan basis with the option of making the move permanent at the end of the season.

However, Real ruled out such a possibility and are looking to raise cash by slapping a £17m price tag on the midfielder.

With such a fee out of reach for the Italian giants, the Old Lady may now have to withdraw their interest in the former Lyon man.

Juve may launch a fresh bid for Diarra, but it is now increasingly likely that they’ll make contact with Udinese again for Gaetano D’Agostino.

The Italian midfielder was seemingly close to a switch just a few weeks ago before talks stalled over the proposed fee.

It’s a similar situation with Rossi. Villarreal seem ready to do a deal but only on their terms and there is a significant difference between asking price and offer.

Villarreal, who now don’t seem very keen on having David Trezeguet as part of the deal, want £20m for the Italian youngster while Juve are ready to bid around £12m.

As part of the Real talks, Juventus were also understood to have proposed a swap deal which would see Trezeguet move to Madrid in return for Ruud Van Nistelrooy. That option was snubbed too.

channel4.com/sport/football_italia

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