Player Focus: Is Falcao an Unnecessary and Impossible Dream for Juventus?
The Old Lady has been known to show her face in Monaco. Her great patron, the late Gianni Agnelli used to own the Villa Leopolda just up the Cote d'Azur in the seaside town of Beaulieu between Nice and the Principality. She liked to have a flutter at the Casino Royale. Some of her bets didn't come off like that on Thierry Henry. "He was too young when he joined us and too counter-attacking. Not suited to our play," remembered Juventus' former general manager Luciano Moggi, who nevertheless sold him onto Arsenal for a profit.A year later, the Old Lady returned stacking her chips high as she bet 35bn lire on Henry's former club-mate and international strike partner David Trezeguet. This time she won big. Trezegol would go onto become the most prolific foreign goalscorer in Juventus' history. Monaco, if you recall, was also the place the deal for Zlatan Ibrahimovic was done a decade ago. The occasion: the Grand yes, it's a place the Old Lady likes to be seen. And La Gazzetta dello Sport would have you believe she has been there this summer. "Juve knocks for Falcao," declared the front page of the pink 10 days ago. It seemed like fantacalcio. Silly season. But La Gazzetta have stood by it and are persisting with the link. Could it really happen? It just seems so think about it in these terms. One of the reported reasons Antonio Conte resigned from Juventus – though not the reason – was the sense the club didn't have the spending capacity to go up another level. A year ago, he lamented how other league champions splashed the cash on elite talent while the Old Lady sought to dine at restaurants where it was €100 a head with €10 in her pocket. Barcelona went out and got Neymar in one of the most expensive transfers ever. Bayern Munich paid Mario Götze's €37m release clause at Borussia Dortmund. The holders in England, Manchester United signed Marouane Fellaini for £27.5m [though unsurprisingly he didn't cite that move as one he envied].Had Conte known Juventus were laying the groundwork for Falcao do you really think he would have left? Of course transfer strategies evolve and this opportunity might not have presented itself at the time he left. But even if Juventus were to have raised the finance for a permanent fee through the sale of either Arturo Vidal or Paul Pogba – something Conte was unwilling to contemplate – how would they pay Falcao's wages? He takes home between €12m and €14m a year net. That's more than twice as high as Juventus' wage ceiling. To further underline that point, Vidal and Carlos Tevez, the club's
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