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Juventus and the Vlahovic mirage: he wins only financially, while a replacement is still missing.

Not the Premier League or La Liga after all, with the Serbian now set to join Besiktas on a highly lucrative wage.

Now that he has found a new club, it is finally possible to make a definitive assessment of who Dusan Vlahovic was for Juventus and what he actually represented. In the end, it is fair to describe him as a major disappointment, or at the very least a huge illusion.

Juventus clearly believed in that illusion when they signed him from Fiorentina in January 2022 for €70 million plus €10 million in bonuses, while also handing him an enormous salary package that, with its scheduled rise, would eventually reach €12 million per season. By bringing in a 22-year-old who had made 108 appearances and scored 49 goals for Fiorentina, Juventus believed they had secured a generational striker, a player capable of leading the side and making the decisive difference. He was not.

Of course, there is one mitigating factor in Vlahovic's favour: he arrived at one of the worst Juventus teams in the club's history. In four and a half years around Juventus, everything happened: a president, Agnelli, and an entire board removed by an investigation, along with repeated changes in the club hierarchy on a scale never previously seen in Juventus history, involving Arrivabene, Cherubini, Giuntoli, Comolli and finally Carnevali and Massara, not to mention the coaching changes. At Juventus, Vlahovic played under Allegri, Motta, Tudor and Spalletti, before eventually reuniting with Italiano, the coach who had got the best from him at Fiorentina and whom he has now joined again at Besiktas.

Even so, regardless of the chaos that has surrounded Juve in recent years, it should really have been up to Vlahovic, along with a few others, to prove they were true champions capable of making the difference anyway and dragging the team out of the mire. Vlahovic managed that only in part: beyond his 68 goals in 168 matches, the number 9 was often betrayed by his own nerves and frustrations, and by technical shortcomings he never succeeded in correcting, especially his first touch and his ability to combine with team-mates in tight spaces. For all the power and accuracy of his shooting, Vlahovic leaves Juventus with only one trophy to show for it, the 2024 Coppa Italia, won thanks to his goal in the final against Atalanta.

His next career move also underlines that he did not become the champion Juventus had hoped for. For months, if not years, the Serbian had been aiming higher, with links to the Premier League, Arsenal in particular, as well as Barcelona and Bayern Munich. In the end, none of those clubs moved for him. At 26, and for the next three years, right in the central and most important stage of his career, Vlahovic must instead settle for the Turkish league. That is said, of course, with full respect for Besiktas and Turkish football, which at this moment are richer and more competitive than Italian football. But it is still not the Premier League or La Liga, which were Vlahovic's dreams.

From a contractual point of view, the Belgrade-born 2000 player lands on his feet completely: in Istanbul he will earn €10 million net per season plus bonuses and a significant signing-on fee. On that front, he and his entourage emerge as the clear winners. Juventus, by contrast, still have not found a replacement for Vlahovic, because Kolo Muani is a mobile forward who likes to roam across the entire attacking line rather than operate as a classic penalty-box centre-forward.