Manchester United transfer target Kenan Yildiz has been taken off the market by Juventus who are desperate not to repeat their Dean Huijsen bungle, according to reports.
The Turkish forward has been a sensation for the Serie A giants during a difficult season, becoming the youngest Juventus player since Alessandro del Piero to score on his Champions League debut.
On Saturday he became the club’s all-time top-scoring teenager, taking that title from Moise Kean with the winning goal against Genoa.
The 1-0 win was the first of Igor Tudor’s reign in the Juventus dugout after Thiago Motta was sacked last week, and the change of manager seems to coincide with a newfound resolve to keep the 19-year-old at the club.
La Gazzetta dello Sport report that a cash injection from the club’s majority owners, which could be worth up to €110m, is imminent, and this would remove the need to sell their most exciting player.
Champions League qualification remains financially “fundamental” for the club, and missing out would still force them into making some sales.
But La Gazzetta claim that the Turkish starboy should now be protected from a summer departure, with the Old Lady instead more likely to look to Andrea Cambiaso, Samuel Mbangula and United-linked striker Dusan Vlahovic to make some money.
Departures from the Allianz Stadium will be scrutinised more closely than ever, with the club red-faced after allowing young defender Huijsen to join Bournemouth for €15m last year.
He has gone on to become one of the best young centre-backs in Europe, with clubs including United and Real Madrid ready to do battle to sign him in the summer.
For his part, Yildiz reportedly wants to stay in Turin, where he “considers himself at home.”
The newspaper, which noted the similarities between the forward’s performance on Saturday and club legend Del Piero, claim that there are “many suitors” for the forward, but for him they “represent flattery but not temptation.”
The report continues that Juventus “never really thought about selling him but were afraid of having to do so to save the accounts.”
Now that they are set for John Elkann’s multi-million-Euro lifeline, they plan to “study a strategy to try to keep him in the summer, when half of Europe could try to tempt the club.”
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Joe Ponting
Joe has spent more than half his life writing about football and all of it following United. As a child he told a doctor his name was ‘Paul Scholes’, but could never pick a pass like him no matter how much he tried.
