Transfer window: Juventus' bargain buys restore sanity amidst market madness this summer

Back in the days when Manchester United would reach Champions League finals and North Korea would qualify for the World Cup, 100 million used to mean something. It was a number which wouldn’t be breached even for a man who had already won the Premier League thrice, had a Champions League medal and was widely recognised as the one of the two best players in the world. Now of course, clubs are perfectly willing to pay a nine-figure sum for someone who scored six league goals in a season or  someone who has not won any trophies at all. [caption id="" align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Buying Blaise Matuidi from PSG for 18.2 million pounds was a masterstroke from Juventus. Reuters[/caption] In times like these, we must look at the savvy Italians for comfort. Well, not all Italians of course. But one club in particular deserves to be recognised for its efforts in restoring sanity to the footballing world. Juventus went all the way to the Champions League finals just last season and won the Italian league for the sixth consecutive time. It is a ( well-run) club full of winners and would be well-entitled to throw money at the best talent in the world to get them to Turin. But that isn’t quite the Juventus style. Let’s take a look at the players they bought in this season. The marquee buy was Federico Bernardeschi, a 23-year-old winger with a cannon of a left foot. Bernardeschi already has nine caps for Italy and is a proven talent in Serie A. Juventus paid 35.7 million pounds for him. For comparison’s sake, Real Madrid paid 40.5 million pounds for Vinicius Junior, a player who will only arrive to play for the club in 2019. They also made some other bargains buys, picking up Benedikt Howedes on loan, Wojciech Szczesny for 10 million pounds and Mattia De Sciglio for 10.6 million pounds. All these players are experienced at the top levels of the game and add value without costing a bomb. Then there was the masterstroke: buying Blaise Matuidi from PSG. The Frenchman is one of the best box-to-box midfielders in the world and adds steel to a pretty solid midfield. A four-time league champion in France, Matuidi’s tactical intelligence makes him an easy fit for Juventus. The amount they paid for him? 18.2 million pounds. It wasn’t all perfect of course. They lost an important cog of their defensive machinery when Leonardo Bonucci moved to Milan. However here too we see Juventus’ ability to extract every last penny out of a deal. After Bonucci made it clear that he wanted to leave, buying clubs had an edge. And yet Juventus managed to get a cool 35.2 million pounds for the 30-year-old. They speedily replaced him too as they made the deal permanent for former Roma and Bayern man Medhi Benatia for less than 15 million pounds. There were other smart pieces of business too. Persuading Bayern Munich to part with Douglas Costa — albeit on loan — was particularly astute. More impressive though was getting Valencia to pay 15.8 million pounds for Simone Zaza. The same Zaza whose first YouTube search result is this. Juventus also netted 16.3 million pounds for bit-part player Mario Lemina. It is all these little things which added up to the club spending a net total of only 15.1 million pounds this transfer window. And while it would be facetious to compare this expenditure with the English clubs, it compares favourably even with the other smartly run club on the continent, Bayern Munich, who are 66.1 million pounds in the red this season. Surprisingly, the only club which has done comparable business is Real Madrid who actually have a positive transfer balance owing to the sales of Alvaro Morata and Danilo. That could soon change though if a certain Kylian Mbappe makes his way to Spanish shores. Calling Madrid an economically-astute club would be quite a stretch considering their past record (they have been the buyers in four of the top 10 most-expensive transfers). But even in the long-term, Juventus show it is busines savvy. From Dani Alves to Patrice Evra to Sami Khedira to Andrea Pirlo, Juventus got them all for pennies on the dollar and used them to run riot in Serie A while make deep inroads into the Champions League as well. It has shown a nose for bargain buys who still have a lot of utility left. Even the young talent it nourishes like Paul Pogba and Kingsley Coman, (both of whom netted Juventus tidy sums when they were sold) usually come in for pretty cheap (Pogba and Coman were both free transfers). Thus the club scouts’ excellent picks are not limited to battle-hardened veterans only but also extend to new talents. Juventus thus will take “ your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” and turn them into Champions League finalists. This season too, despite spending a mere fraction of what the other clubs did, Juventus remains a force to contend with. Write them off at your own peril. All records of transfers and fees courtesy The Guardian and Transfermarkt_._