OFFICIALLY OFFICIAL: Juventus sell Nicolò Fagioli to Fiorentina

Juventus have sold Nicolò Fagioli to Fiorentina.

Fiorentina will pay €2.5 million to loan him for the rest of the season, with a €13.5 million conditional obligation to buy over the summer. That option includes €3 million in add-ons, making the total value of the transfer up to €19 million.

The sale is the culmination of one of the stranger sagas of Thiago Motta’s tenure as manager. At the beginning of the season Fagioli looked like he would be a major part of Juve’s plans, but as the year wore on he fell further and further out of favor. He ended up playing only 22 games in all competitions and only started seven of them, playing a total of 770 minutes between Serie A and the Champions League. His best game of the year was undoubtedly Juve’s improbable 3-2 comeback against RB Leipzig, when he had an assist and played what may have been his best game in the first team. Besides that, though, he wasn’t able to distinguish himself under Motta’s tutelage.

Fagioli has been a Juventus fan since childhood and has been with the club since 2015. He joined the Primavera two years later, and made his debut for what would become the NextGen in 2018. He was given his first team debut by Andrea Pirlo on January 27, 2021, when he started as the team’s regista against SPAL in the Coppa Italia quarterfinal. The next month he made his Serie A debut, coming on as a sub against Crotone.

He spent the 2021-22 season on loan in Serie Bat Cremonese, where he had the kind of year that would’ve made him a huge commodity in the transfer market had he not already been a Juve player. He helped the team earn promotion to the top flight, and was re-incorporated into the first team the next year by Massimiliano Allegri.

Allegri, doing how Allegri do, refused to give his young midfielder any serious game time until so many midfielders got hurt that he had no choice. He made an impact immediately, scoring a goal alla Del Piero to beat Lecce, then sealing a 2-0 win over Inter the next week. He became a mainstay in the team for the rest of the season, until a broken collarbone in the Europa League semifinal ended his season.

Of course, the next year turned into a nightmare when he was suspended for seven months for gambling on soccer—though never on Juventus. Fagioli accepted his punishment with grace, and was open about his recovery process from his gambling addiction.

One of the better technical players in the team, it’s really a shock just how low in the pecking order he fell. Now, he’ll get a new start to his career in Florence, where former teammate Moise Kean is already undergoing a career renaissance.

It’s a shame how things have ended for Fagioli. I’ll miss my large adult son, and wish him the very best—in all his games but the ones against Juve, obviously.