After months of speculation, Juventus were able to find a transfer partner for striker Moise Kean, selling him off to Fiorentina for a cool 13 million euros plus five million euros in add-ons.
Fiorentina have become a haven for clubs looking to dump off disappointing strikers, as the Viola seem to have a low threshold for the players they are acquiring at the position.
If anything, Kean is a significant upgrade on the strikers Fiorentina have cast their lot with in the past, such as monumental Real Madrid bust Luka Jovic or the comically out-of-his-depth Arthur Cabral.
Juventus technically made money from Moise Kean
From a Juventus perspective, Kean is a relic of a past transfer policy that seemed to center around casting random hopes on players in the hopes they would be magically “good enough”, rather than ambitiously going after star talent.
In total, Juventus spent 37 million euros to bring Kean back, having initially sold him to Everton for 27.5 million euros. The 37 million euro figure comes from the 30 million Juve spent to make his transfer permanent from the Premier League, as well as the seven million euro loan fee prior to that.
So in total, Juventus actually gained money from selling, buying back, and then selling Kean again. After this Fiorentina transfer, Juventus will have made a total of 45 million euros from selling Kean while spending 37 million.
Kean made little impact in Turin
Kean spent three seasons with the Bianconeri after his time with Everton and PSG, never starting more than the 12 matches from his first season back in Turin in the 2021/22 season.
He scored 5 goals that season and then 6 in the next, but last season in 2023/24, Kean didn’t score a single goal across 8 starts and 19 total appearances.
Fiorentina are spending nearly 20 million euros on a 24-year-old player coming off a goalless season, so, from that vantage point, Juventus couldn’t have expected more than that.
He failed to live up to his potential
Kean was promising for Juve in 2018/19 as an 18-year-old with 6 goals in 541 Serie A minutes, but he was poor for Everton and only moderately successful alongside Mauro Icardi and Kylian Mbappe with PSG.
Basically, Kean has yet to live up to the potential he showed briefly in the 2018/19 season for the Bianconeri, but he could still do so at a different club and within a different setting in Serie A.
Juventus have a top striker in Dusan Vlahovic, and Thiago Motta is eyeing better alternatives to back him up than Arkadiusz Milik and Kean.
What’s next for Juve?
Meanwhile, Fiorentina’s strikers – M’Bala Nzola, Lucas Beltran, and Andrea Belotti – all combined for just 12 goals last season. Kean can’t hurt as an option, and while Nzola and Belotti are talented, Fiorentina could not justify heading into the season without a new player after finishing eighth in the league.
Juventus weren’t going to get a better deal than this, so they can cut Kean loose and wish him the best, hoping that the talented player inside the Italian international will rise to the surface.
Now, the Bianconeri’s next task is to work with Thiago Motta to see which strikers fit the profile he wants as options who can either provide experienced goal-scoring or a relatively young, well-rounded player who can help the wingers.
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