Juventus deny making an approach for Guardiola

Juventus have not spoken to Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola about replacing Massimiliano Allegri, insists the club’s sporting director Fabio Paratici.

Italian news agency AGI claimed on Thursday that Juve had reached an agreement with Guardiola for him to succeed the outgoing Allegri as head coach.

According to the outlet, the Catalan was set to sign a four-year deal worth €24million per season with the Bianconeri on June 4 and be presented to the media 10 days later.

City Football Group executive Alberto Galassi dismissed the claims as “a load of nonsense” and now Paratici has expressed his bemusement at the reports, describing them as “strange”.

“I think we live in a strange world,” he told DAZN.

“We didn’t have any contact. We never even thought about it because [Guardiola] is under contract. For a thousand reasons, it all seems very strange to me.”

 Allegri: “I thank you all. We now say goodbye and I will make a toast together with you all at the end of the season.”

Here ends the last press conference of Massimiliano Allegri on the Juventus bench. #SampJuve #ForzaJuve pic.twitter.com/hbGeLk1BFB

— JuventusFC (@juventusfcen) May 25, 2019

A host of names, including Mauricio Pochettino and Maurizio Sarri, have been linked with the job but Paratici says Juventus will not be rushed into a decision.

“We have clear ideas,” he said. “We have already said it; we are doing our evaluations and there are still many competitions in progress. Until all the competitions end, it seems to me right, out of respect for everyone to remain in this situation.”

Paratici added that Juve are in no hurry to sign new players and are happy to wait until the new man is in place before entering the transfer market.

“We will act according to what the new coach’s directives will be,” he explained. “Before we move on, we will wait, very calmly. We try to improve every year.”