Juventus and the Vlahovic illusion: only one side profits financially, but a replacement is still missing.

There was no move to the Premier League or La Liga, with the Serbian instead set to join Besiktas on a highly lucrative salary.

Now that he has found a new club, it is possible to make a final assessment of who Dusan Vlahovic was for Juventus, and what he came to represent. In the end, he was a major disappointment, or at the very least a huge illusion.

Juventus signed him from Fiorentina in January 2022 for €70 million plus €10 million in bonuses, while also handing him an enormous wage package that increased over time and would eventually rise to €12 million per season. By recruiting a 22-year-old who had made 108 appearances and scored 49 goals for Fiorentina, Juventus believed they were bringing in a generational striker, a player capable of carrying the side and making the decisive difference. That is not how it turned out.

Of course, Vlahovic does have one mitigating circumstance: he arrived at one of the worst Juventus teams in history. In four and a half years in the Juventus environment, everything happened: a president, Andrea Agnelli, and an entire board were swept away by an investigation, while the club also went through a sequence of management changes unlike anything previously seen in its history, involving Maurizio Arrivabene, Federico Cherubini, Cristiano Giuntoli, Damien Comolli and finally Giovanni Carnevali and Frederic Massara, not to mention the coaches. In Turin, Vlahovic played under Massimiliano Allegri, Thiago Motta, Igor Tudor and Luciano Spalletti, before eventually reuniting with Vincenzo Italiano, the coach who had got the best out of him at Fiorentina and with whom he has now linked up again at Besiktas.

Even so, regardless of the chaos Juventus have lived through in recent years, it should have been up to Vlahovic, along with a few others, to show that they were champions capable of making the difference anyway and of pulling the team out of the mire. Vlahovic did that only in part: apart from his 68 goals in 168 matches, the No. 9 was often held back by his own nerves and frustrations, and by technical shortcomings he never managed to correct, especially his first touch and his play in tight combinations with team-mates. Despite having a powerful and accurate shot, Vlahovic leaves Juventus with only one trophy in the cabinet, the 2024 Coppa Italia, secured thanks to his goal in the final against Atalanta.

The fact that Vlahovic is not the champion the Juventus world had hoped for is also reflected in the direction his transfer market journey has taken. For months, if not years, the Serbian had entertained bigger ambitions, with links to the Premier League, especially Arsenal, as well as Barcelona and Bayern Munich. In the end, none of those clubs gave serious consideration to signing him. At 26, and for the next three years, right in the middle of the most important phase of his career, Vlahovic must settle for the Turkish league. That is said, of course, with full respect for Besiktas and Turkish football, which at this moment are wealthier and more competitive than Italian football. But it is still not the Premier League or La Liga, which were the competitions Vlahovic had dreamed of.

From a contractual perspective, the Belgrade-born player from the year 2000 has landed on his feet completely: in Istanbul he will earn €7.5 million net per season plus bonuses and a sizeable signing-on fee. On that front, he and his entourage have clearly come out as the winners. Juventus, meanwhile, still have not found a replacement for Vlahovic, because Randal Kolo Muani is a mobile attacker who prefers to move across the entire forward line rather than play as a traditional penalty-box centre-forward.