Reports: Juventus’ deal for Youssef En-Nesyri on hold as his former club comes into the fold
Juventus’ reported deal for Youssef En-Nesyri has hit a bit of a road block. Or probably more than just a minor one since it is the player himself that is holding up the deal from being completed on a day when a lot of previous reporting thought it would be done by now.
That’s mainly due to the player himself.
According to reports from ilBianconero’s Romeo Agresti, Sky Italia’s Gianluca Di Marzio and TuttoJuve’s Mirko Di Natale, En-Nesyri has not yet accepted the move to Juventus and is still trying to decide as to whether he wants to move to Turin during the winter transfer window. A big part of that is because his former club, Sevilla, has reportedly come back into the fold and is now an option for him to go to this month. That comes after Juventus and Fenerbahce had all but agreed to a deal on Friday for En-Nesyri, with the Moroccan striker joining the Bianconeri on a sixth-month loan deal — with a very high loan fee of around €5 million for the second half of the 2025-26 season — with an option to buy worth upward of €20 million come the summertime.
Agresti has since followed up his initial report by saying Juventus will not sit back and wait for things to play out much longer, basically setting a deadline of Monday for the deal to be closed or to move on and potentially begin pursuing another striker target to bring in before the winter transfer window closes on Feb. 2 in Italy.
When Juventus’ interest in En-Nesyri first started to take off, there was already speculation in the Italian media as to just how interested he was in being a short-term signing and there not being much clarity when it came to his future beyond the springtime in Turin. Considering the fact that it sounded like he was not fully aware of his standing at Fenerbahce being in doubt until after his participation in the Africa Cup of Nations earlier this month, it’s completely understandable as to why En-Nesyri would like some reassurance about his future rather than just bouncing around to multiple clubs over the next few transfer windows.
Plus, when Sevilla — a club he played for from 2020 to the summer of 2024 when he moved to Fenerbahce for a club-record €19.5 million fee — the temptation to return to a club that he knows a whole lot better than Juventus is certainly a tempting opportunity.
As Agresti said, Juventus aren’t going to just sit around and wait for an answer from En-Nesyri. Once Monday arrives, there will be one more week remaining in the winter transfer window. That’s not a whole lot of time to get something done. We’ve already saw what happens when Juve gets into prolonged negotiations or waits on a player over the summer when Paris Saint-Germain wouldn’t allow Randal Kolo-Muani come back to Turin unless it was for a fee they wanted and nothing less. Juve need time to pivot, and there’s only so much time for them to actually bring in another striker during the winter window.
We’ll get an answer soon enough, it seems. And who really knows what it will be at this point.
