Vlahovic and Juventus near termination: 'Ready to sit out the whole year'
The Old Lady has offered an early termination with a 24 million euro pay-off; the Serbian striker refuses a wage cut and is waiting for June 30.
On Monday morning, in a fitness session at Juventus’s Continassa training centre, Vlahovic refused to shake hands with club director Cristiano Giuntoli. The footage was published by Italy’s Tuttosport, and for someone who missed 14 matches of the 2025-26 season with a thigh muscle injury, it is not a picture that is easily forgotten after last year’s stand-off. Head coach Thiago Motta declined at his press conference to comment on Vlahovic, saying only that “some decisions are not made by the coach, but by the front office and the player.”
The Old Lady, via Gianluca Di Marzio, made public on Tuesday an offer for early termination of Vlahovic’s contract, with 24 million euros in compensation. That is half the total salary the Serbia striker would earn in 2026-27, with a contract expiring on June 30, 2027. The player and his team rejected the offer overnight, which for the Italian media means the parties are drifting further apart.
How did it come to this?
Vlahovic arrived at Juventus in 2022 from Fiorentina for 81.6 million euros, one of the largest strikers’ transfers in Italian football history. Across his first two seasons he scored 33 in 87, a fall in productivity from someone who had managed 49 in 79 in Florence. The reasons, according to former coach Massimiliano Allegri, were “an overly defensive system that does not suit the style of a player like him.”
For 2025-26, the Serbia striker rejected last autumn’s offer of a new deal at 6 million euros a year, asking for 8 million. Head coach Thiago Motta said in February that Vlahovic was “not in the coaching plan for next season,” which the Italian press read as an implicit signal to other clubs. Milan, Bayern Munich, Arsenal and Barcelona, all in contact through his agent Darko Ristic, are now waiting for the outcome of the termination talks.
In statistical terms, Vlahovic scored 12 in 24 in Serie A in 2025-26, a respectable tally for a season of this shape. Assists: four, putting him in the top ten strikers in the Italian league. On the other side, only 22 percent of Juventus attacks reached the penalty box on his side, an indicator that for a player of 1.90 metres the capacity for aerial play exists, but the coach does not call on it.
What happens after June 30 if there is no deal?
With the contract expiring, Vlahovic becomes a free agent. That means any club can sign him without paying a transfer fee to the Italian giant, a major financial loss for Turin. The Old Lady would forfeit somewhere between 30 and 40 million euros that a transfer before expiry could have brought in. Vlahovic, on the other hand, can collect a signing bonus of up to 15 million euros as a free agent, something seen twice in Serie A in the last five years, with Adrien Rabiot and Paul Pogba.
People close to the striker say he is ready “not to play for a whole year just to wait the contract out and earn the full sum agreed.” For a player who has been Serie A top scorer five times over his career, that is a risky position, since physical form after a 12-month layoff at the age of 25-plus does not come back easily.
Personally, I give Vlahovic a 70 percent chance of signing for Milan in July. Their lead striker partnership with Christian Pulisic in the US national team, with whom he has 27 combined goals in qualifiers, is established. Milan coach Maurizio Sarri said in March he would “gladly take a player like Vlahovic.” On a salary of 8 million euros, 1.5 million more than the current Milan top tier, a deal can close before the first week of July.
Juventus expect a new round of talks by the end of the week. Thiago Motta’s next press conference is scheduled at Continassa on Friday.
