Andrea Pirlo will be the Juventus manager again next year. And Cristiano Ronaldo stays. Pavel Nedved, Juventus vice president, sets the stakes for Juventus’ future. “Pirlo is and will be the Juventus coach, 100%. We married a project with Andrea, knowing the difficulties that there would be. We wanted to do something more but we didn’t succeed, the difficulties were foreseen”, says Nedved in an exclusive interview available on Dazn from 24 March. “We are very calm, on the path we wanted and we keep this path. He has everything to become a great coach,” he adds. Juve, out of the Champions League in the round of 16, virtually unstitched the Scudetto from their jersey: after the sensational home knockout with Benevento, the Juventus team is 10 points behind the leaders Inter and above all has to worry about winning the qualification for the next one. Champions League.
Will Cristiano Ronaldo be in Juve next year? The 36-year-old Portuguese earns over 30 million a season and is bound by a contract valid until 2022. “For me, Ronaldo can’t be touched, he has a contract until June 30, 2022 and will stay. What happens next will be seen,” says Nedved. “Cristiano Ronaldo, both technically and in terms of image, has given us an impetus towards the Olympus of football. On his technical level, nothing can be said: he has scored more than 100 goals in 120 matches and, moreover, he has dragged into the Champions League. He is a very simple guy, even if from the outside he might not look like that. He is the prototype of a modern player who with immense talent and a lot of work has achieved incredible goals. “
This year Juve lacked the contribution of Paulo Dybala. The Argentine, who has been stopped for months due to injury, did not make an impact. “We missed him. I believe that this year he didn’t play more than 800 minutes with us: there are very few. His presence would guarantee us offensive variants and goals that obviously we have missed so far. He has a contract for another year and I have no more to add to what the director Paratici and the president Agnelli have already said. But it is clear that at Juventus we evaluate every market opportunity “