Juventus and the "temptations" of Del Piero
The negociations are open but the black-and-white club fears the surprise. The billionaire offer from Atletico Madrid has reopened the case.

April 13, 1999
La Gazzetta dello Sport

By Salvatore Lo Presti

Turin - Besides the encouraging smiles from Umberto Agnelli, on the ambit of the Del Piero case seems to overcome some threatning clouds. Juve starts to get worried, Luciano Moggi's and Claudio Pasqualin's words, respectively, director of the society and the player's manager, show less signs of optimism. The same way Del Piero seems to be less optimistic. The beggining of it is clearly the sensational offer the president of Atletico Madrid, Jesus Gil y Gil, has made for Del Piero. An offer that has had the effect of separate the two parts. Still, in ten days, they spoke about the new "contractual engeneering" formula to set up between them the real salary and the use of image rights. The point is that Juve already has an expert in this to create inside their commercial area a structure that's appropriate to the players' use of image rights, not only Del Piero. But today the positive effects of the contract extension seem to have caused the dirty tricks from the president of Atletico Madrid. A stoke that in a very bad way is, on the stategical features, like the one that took Christian Vieri from Juve to Atletico.

At this point, between Juve and Del Piero, it seems like a big trail has been reopened. A difference of two billions (exclusive image rights) that seems able to fill up at this point. This way is hard to try to identify the real figures: from seven to nine, maybe from eight to ten. Billions, of course. Obviously the negociations are still happening. "Let's see this week, or the next", says Moggi. But not for sure. A couple of weeks ago it seemed the surprise wouldn't happen. Today the share has changed into three.
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