Analysis and reaction to Newcastle's “blockbuster offer” for Juventus Paulo Dybala

Paulo Dybala has been around forever now. In fact, it is quite impressive he’s still only 28 years old after all of the things we have been hearing from him for years now. That, though, is not the most important date to know about Dybala these days. That’d be his current contract’s expiration date: June 30, 2022. Dybala is, yes, about to become a free agent in a development that is getting more and more common in European football.

What happens when you put a great player (Dybala) from a football giant (Juventus) with an expiring contract (in just two months) and sprinkle a little bit of a money-laden/Nouveau-Riche club (Newcastle) into the same cocktail shaker? You get a seemingly legit rumor—and perhaps a phenomenal beverage to drink while you get informed about the news!

Football Insider is reporting a potential offer has been made from the Tyneside club to poach the Argentine striker and turn his black and white threads into... black and white threads, of course! Quoting Wayne Veysey words from FI, the reporter is assuring “Newcastle United have submitted a blockbuster offer for Juventus superstar Paulo Dybala, Football Insider understands.” Crystal clear, boys.

Doubling down on sources, Veysey follows his opening statement with another one saying that “a Newcastle source has told us they have been in contact with Dybala’s camp and are willing to make him their highest-ever paid player to lure him to England.”

Now, for one, Juventus is definitely not going to win the Serie A this season, only the second time they’ll fail at that in the past 13 years making it two such failures in a row. It could still happen, but it is definitely going to be a tall task as the Turin residents need to make a six-point difference with no. 1 Inter up while also overtaking Napoli in the table... with just three games remaining.

Of course, Newcastle is aiming at a return to those magical European nights of yore as soon as by the fall of 2023. That’s the dream of every living, breathing Geordie and it could actually happen given the turnaround the Magpies have experienced playing under the orders of Toon Legend Eddie Howe. That doesn’t mean Newcastle is already a Champions League, Europa League, goddam not even a Conference League team these days.

Dybala might be leaving Juventus—and Magpie fans can dream, why not!?—but Dybala definitely is not going to sign with Morecambe. That, I need no sources to tell you. It’s happened in the past to some extent, so it could still happen for Newcastle. P.S.G. went from spending €9M in 2010 with Nene the highest-priced buy (€5M) only to dump €42M on Javier Pastore alone—which, coincidentally, happened to be Argentine and arrive from Italy! P.S.G., by the way, had not won the French Ligue since 1994 back then, had three French cup victories this century before 2010, and had won an already-extinct UEFA Cup Winners Cup in 1996.

If you have paid casual attention to the world of football for the past 10 years, you know Dybala has been linked to Juventus (arrived in Turin from Palermo, of course), and then an absolutely heterogeneous array of clubs from Barcelona to the very own P.S.G. probably by the way of Berlin, Istanbul, and Buenos Aires. One thing always remained the same, and it is that Dybala never got tied to a club like Newcastle—capable, yes, but with no recent history of success or appeal.

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Dybala has turned into the preternatural, perennial castoff player of late. He’s been dragged down to a level of insignificant to those looking from afar that only the savvy and avid viewers and followers of the sport have been smart enough to dodge. That’s because Paulo Dybala, like it or not, is an extraordinary Midget Müller or Tiny Raumdeuter, whatever you prefer.

The industrial proliferation of Dybala on a football field is definitely not at the height of Thomas Müller’s in his prime, which seems to never end. There’s no sugarcoating that. Nor are their skillsets close enough to have them as facsimiles. That said, Dybala has scored 9 goals in Serie A this year (25th-most), has assisted 5 goals himself ( 14th-most), and he’s of only three players with a 9+5 in fewer than 2,000 minutes played on the year.

Take any high-leverage game, and Dybala just keeps on giving in each and every one of them. To wit, the one against title-contender Inter last April.

Dybala is one of the last Enganches out there. And he’s available for free, by the way. Look at his average position above, smacked right between the midfield strata of Juventus players and the lone center-forward in Vlahovic. His actions happened literally all across the pitch.

Simply put, he only lacked scoring a goal.

All of this is to say that Dybala, in case he’s been offered the alleged “deal worth more than £200,000-a-week”, per our friend Wayne Veysey, would be an absolute delight to see knocking footballs in St James’ Park if you ask me.

As is always the case with this type of thing, and unless we get a very very loud report coming from some truly reputable place or identified source, this is all still a dream. A dream, that compared to years past, though, is in the realm of opaque reality. Here’s hoping.