He doesn’t not want to go to United - he’s just having a tough time accepting the fact Juvé don’t want him.
And honestly, fair game. I would too if I was Dybala and heard I’m being swapped for Lukaku. That’s just disrespectful.
Paulo Dybala
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And honestly, fair game. I would too if I was Dybala and heard I’m being swapped for Lukaku. That’s just disrespectful.
I think Bruno was only ever a Pogba replacement. We do need creativity to open up packed defences though so I would not be totally happy without Dybala.
I'm prepared to take on board that this is along term rebuild as long as the Glazers are. If they don't bring in Creativity then don't blame OGS.
I'm on a Juve forum and literally nobody wants Lukaku 
They want Dybala to get a chance under Sarri and are baffled by their Management if this is true.
They want Dybala to get a chance under Sarri and are baffled by their Management if this is true.He's played out wide with some success, has he not? I remember him being useful out there against Brazil for Belgium. Seems to have a decent delivery on him as well, maybe that's what they have planned. Either way I can't see that they'd be going for Lukaku without consulting Sarri, although if that is the case then clearly they have a problem.
The posters on the Juventuz forum should be happy their club actually signs players! Although I can understand why there might be unease, I probably wouldn't be so calm if Spurs were doing a similar deal. Honestly I'm surprised that Juventus don't want to keep him, on paper you'd think a player like Dybala would fit in well.
In Italy, they report wages after tax.
Lukaku @ €9m
*crickets*
Dybala @ £10m
*zomgosh, he only wants the moneyy*
...I swear you couldn’t make this up, leave it to knee jerk United fans to...
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Lukaku @ €9m
*crickets*
Dybala @ £10m
*zomgosh, he only wants the moneyy*
...I swear you couldn’t make this up, leave it to knee jerk United fans to...
Lukaku at this point is a donkey that can score goals while Dybala is actually a solid talent with much more in his game (although he is inconsistent). I honestly can't see what Juve wins with this trade.I'm on a Juve forum and literally nobody wants Lukaku
I agree. I hope we are really in for Bruno because he would really link the midfield and attack together, whilst shipping in a few himself. If Ed puts all his attention on this whole Dybala saga and puts Bruno on hold and we miss out on them both, I'm going to be pissed. Maybe it's better to get the players that actually want to leave and come play here?
Yes. It would be a really good window for our defence which has been an issue for years, some might be happy with that.
I get the feeling that Woody will go for any big name player that is offered to us at this point. I seriously doubt that he was on Ole's list of requirements. I'd still take him although I have my doubts he'll want to come.
Woodward as Dougal?
The meltdown from Juve fans in this tweet comment section is so good
Ok Boris
Ole as Father Ted and Phil Jones as Mrs Doyle?
Isn't he in prison?
It's bizarre to say the least.I'm on a Juve forum and literally nobody wants Lukaku
Plus Juve will sell him to Inter next summer for 90 million Euros, paid in 5 instalments over the course of five years of course.
How are we looking @RDCR07
If he comes I bet he will play 10 position. From what I’ve read and watched on YouTube this guy will be wasted on wing. I don’t think Ole doesn’t want him. 10 is the second most problematic position (after CB). It makes sense (position wise) to buy Dybala. I have doubts about his commitment and adaptation though.
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i find it strange that juve are happy to see him go. very talented player but weird. also he doesnt seem to really want to come. Dont see point having him for two years then he leaves again.
There is a significant difference between not wanting to come and not wanting to leave.
Guess who’s just checked into the Lowry Hotel...
Me
Me
Oh come on))
“I wasn’t keen on coming here, but then I spoke to Di Maria...”
Not sure if this has been posted, but I found this person's in-depth look at Dybala pretty interesting.
https://www.reddit.com/r/reddevils/...lysis_uncovering_la_joya_your_complete_guide/
https://www.reddit.com/r/reddevils/...lysis_uncovering_la_joya_your_complete_guide/
"He can still improve a great deal and will become the best. He has everything it takes to win the Ballon d'Or. I just hope that, when it happens, he invites me to the party." – Stefano Sorrentino
“He’s too restricted by tactics in Italy, and he should move to either the Premier League or La Liga in order to mature definitively” - Maurizio Zamparini
“Paulo has an innate gift and I’m sorry to see him play so far from goal” – Claudio Marchisio, 2019
Paulo Dybala’s spell at the top of European football has been an intriguing affair. Ask most fans of the sport for who they would include in their list of the best forwards in the modern game, and it’s highly likely that he features near the very top. Adored by Juventus fans since his arrival in Turin from Palermo in 2015, Dybala earned the nickname ‘La Joya’ – translating to ‘The Jewel’ – for incredible performances which helped lead the club to four consecutive Serie A titles, three Coppa Italias and a Champions League final across four seasons. Yet, despite this highly impressive record, there still remains a lingering lack of fulfilment in the career of the second-best little Argentine around today; largely ignored by his national team, and facing growing questions about his tactical identity amid a major period of transition at Juventus, it seems now more than ever that the time has come for Dybala to seek the next chapter in his career. Enter Manchester United?
In this post I’ll be providing a review of Dybala’s time at Juventus, where he was able to establish himself as the worldwide recognised player we all know today, before moving onto a summary of the individual qualities he could bring to Manchester United, finally concluding by looking at how he could fit into the team from a tactical standpoint. As a warning, this point is fairly long, so I’ve included a TLR summary at the bottom (I’d recommend reading the whole thing if you have time though, feedback is appreciated).
Season Reviews
2015/16 – Pogbala
Dybala’s debut season at Juventus is important to take note of for a couple of reasons. The first is that this was the only season where he was a team-mate to none other than our very own Paul Pogba. One of the most frequent questions I’ve seen asked in threads on here and r/soccer is how we plan to fit these two players together, partly due to a perception that both are creative ‘talisman’ players who seem to enjoy as much freedom as possible – which could lead to the two interfering with one another and also create concerns over a lack of defensive workrate. This is why evaluating their past record together is highly useful.
Looking at how Juventus lined up this season in matches that Pogba and Dybala started, we see a fair amount of tactical variation from the manager Massimiliano Allegri, with a willingness to use multiple formations including 4-3-1-2 and 4-4-2. However, by far the most common choice was a 3-5-2, with Pogba in a 3-man midfield alongside Claudio Marchisio and Sami Khedira, and Dybala as part of a front 2 strike partnership alongside Mario Mandzukic. In this system, Pogba would lie deep, but also have some freedom to push forward and link up with the forwards thanks to the defensive security of the BBC (Bonucci – Barzagli – Chiellini), while Dybala played just behind Mandzukic, the Croatian acting as a target-man to hold up the ball and bring the wing-backs + Pogba and Dybala into play. In theory, the end goal of such a system was pretty clear: Pogba was to be a driving force of creativity by turning defence into attack from box-to-box, while Dybala was to be the focal point of that attack.
So how well did it work in practice? This is the second thing to note: playing Dybala centrally as a second striker (with Pogba as a deeper-lying playmaker) yielded massive rewards, with this being the only season where Paulo was Juventus’ top scorer across all competitions. Despite being given less of a free role and more defensive responsibility than in the previous season after the departures of Andrea Pirlo and Arturo Vidal, Pogba was able to achieve a then-career best of 10 goals and 16 assists. Dybala meanwhile, truly made his mark by scoring 23 goals across all competitions with 9 assists to boot. Stats aside, this system produced a very entertaining relationship between the two players, as Dybala being allowed to play in a classic second striker role meant that aside from providing goalscoring threat as a striker, he would often have the freedom to drop slightly deeper into an attacking midfield role, allowing Pogba to make runs into the vacated space and receive the ball in a more advanced position. All in all, a near flawless debut season for Dybala. If any lesson can be learnt from it, it’s that Pogba and Dybala can easily thrive together in the right system, provided they have secure cover from the defenders and midfielders around them.
2016/17 and 2017/18 – A star in the ‘Five Star’
I’ve combined these two seasons together, partly to keep things concise, but also because of tactical changes by Allegri that began to transform the identity of Juventus across the two seasons. 2016 marked the advent of massive change at Juve, as the departure of Paul Pogba and Alvaro Morata paved the way for the arrival of Miralem Pjanic and Gonzalo Higuain into the team as replacements. With an in-form Higuain added to an attacking lineup that already featured top players like Mandzukic, Juan Cuadrado and of course Dybala, the question was how everybody would fit into the team, or alternatively, who would have to get benched in the process.
As it turned out, the answer was nobody, with Allegri switching from 3-5-2 to an innovative 4-2-3-1 formation referred to as the “Five Star” early in the season. This setup saw Mandzukic moved to a hybrid winger/striker position on the left to allow for Higuain to take up the number 9 role in the centre, with Cuadrado on the right wing. What about Dybala then? There was a subtle change in his role as he was asked to play as more of an attacking midfielder/10 in the hole behind Higuain and in front of the Khedira-Pjanic double pivot. In reality, though, this didn’t create any massive changes in playstyle; watch any match from this season and you’ll see how Dybala has the freedom to roam in advanced positions, often drifting towards the right or into the box to play off of Higuain as a second striker, even if his initial starting position had him more involved in the tempo-control and build-up-play of particular games. In what was probably the best season for Juventus as a whole during his time at the club, Dybala obtained 19 goals and 9 assists, becoming the top scorer in the Coppa Italia and forming a lethal partnership with Higuain as the team achieved another domestic double and reached the final of the Champions League. From an individual perspective, Dybala’s best moment had to be his complete annihilation of Barcelona in the Champions League quarter-final , scoring a gorgeous brace in a 3-0 victory in the first leg at Turin.
2017-18 was a much more complex and interesting season, where Dybala looked totally unstoppable at times and completely expendable at others. He started off by scoring 12 goals in his first 8 competitive games, including two incredible hat-tricks against Genoa and Sassuolo. Over time as the season progressed though, came the start of increasing experimentation by Allegri to look at ways of having the team develop without Paulo at its core. If I’ve done a good job at explaining how valuable Dybala was for Juventus up to this point as a key attacker, it’s also worth outlining some of Allegri’s concerns with him:
When Dybala picked up a thigh injury at the beginning of 2018, then, it was a convenient opportunity for Allegri to switch from largely using 4-2-3-1 to a traditional 4-3-3 in his absence, made possible via the added personnel to the squad of Douglas Costa and Federico Bernadeschi as winger options, creating a front 3 of Mandzukic-Higuain-Costa/Bernadeschi. The team remained unbeaten in this period, securing crucial victories against Roma, Atalanta and Lazio in the process. With Dybala’s return, the team mostly reverted to 4-2-3-1 but a crucial take-away from this period was that the team had effectively learnt how to succeed without building around him, occasionally benching him to revert back to 4-3-3 or playing him as a winger when it was deemed tactically desirable (keep this in mind for later). Nevertheless, he continued to be extremely productive upon returning, scoring plenty including the winning goal against Tottenham in the Champions League last 16, a crucial winner against Lazio, a goal and assist against Milan and providing the winning assist for Higuain against Inter with a superb free-kick delivery, all of which was massively important as Juventus beat Napoli to Serie A by 4 points after a very close title race.
- A lack of defensive workrate, leading to exposure in central midfield
- Occasional inconsistency in performance
- the issue of Dybala’s best position (second striker/free roaming 10) being quite difficult to implement properly in the modern game, a slot in the starting XI that a lot of managers would use for a winger or a more conventional number 9.
In total, Dybala scored 26 goals with 7 assists in 2017/18, his most productive season by sheer numbers for Juventus, even in spite of being treated with slightly less importance for the team’s overall performance. Looking at his performance across 2016 to 2018, it can be said that he performed extremely well in the 4-2-3-1 formation, as a hybrid attacking midfielder/second striker, vital to the creative and attacking output of Juventus.
2018/19 – …Can he play RW?
“Allegri is ruining Dybala… if things continue like this, I’ll tell him to leave” – Maurizio Zamparini
“Many of Juventus' players are uncomfortable at the club. There is a great chance that Paulo leaves, he needs a change.” – Gustavo Dybala
Now we come to the elephant in the room, 2018/19. So much has been said about Dybala’s performance last season, so I’ll keep the introductory stuff brief. The arrival of a certain Cristiano Ronaldo was a massive moment for Juventus, one that required a tactical re-think from Allegri to build around a unique player regarded as one of the very best to ever play the game. It’s known that Ronaldo plays best as a winger, but one granted absolute freedom to roam around wherever he needs to over the pitch in order to create chances and score goals. So, the solution for Allegri seems simple: organise Juventus into a 4-3-3, giving Ronaldo a free role from the wing.
But it’s not all sunshine and rainbows for our Argentine friend, as the new 4-3-3 is a problematic in not just one, but two ways:
Take the above into account, and the following will make more sense. In comparison to the 25+ goals and assists Paulo was contributing for Juventus each season prior to 2018/19, his return was ‘just’ 10 goals and 5 assists across all competitions, a big step down. This is where the numbers are not doing justice in telling the full story, because Dybala has had to adapt into a more creative and less offensive role. He functioned as a right winger in the same manner as Juan Mata used to: drifting inwards into an attacking midfield role to provide service for Ronaldo and Mandzukic ahead of him, leaving wide duties to the right-back Joao Cancelo. As well as the decreased goal output being a consequence of this, Dybala was also played less overall, with 2800 minutes in 18/19 compared to around 3300 in both 17/18 and 16/17, Bernadeschi competing with him for the right-wing spot.
- This formation doesn’t really accommodate for Dybala’s best position in a central role, lacking the presence of a second striker. As such, Dybala is forced to play out of position as a right winger to get into the team.
- If this wasn’t already enough of an issue, we must also remember that Allegri is a pragmatic manager who emphasises the importance of defensive balance within a team. Giving one of his attackers a complete free role is acceptable (perhaps begrudgingly), but two is unthinkable. As a result, Dybala is expected to contribute to the build-up play, often not operating like a proper right wing forward, but instead an attacking midfielder who must build up play from a deeper position than he is used to.
It wasn’t all doom and gloom for Dybala though, as his new role actually helped in improving certain aspects of his game. Dybala averaged 2.2 key passes per game in Serie A last season, second only to Pjanic and a massive improvement over his 1.6 key passes in 17/18. This demonstrated his increased comfort with operating as a playmaker whilst Ronaldo took on the job of being the team’s main goal-scorer. Furthermore, he scored a career best 5 goals in the Champions League, including a hat-trick against Young Boys whilst Ronaldo was absent due to a match ban. This is an important point to consider: did Paulo Dybala really massively decline as a goalscoring force, or was the issue the fact that Ronaldo replaced him in that role instead? The evidence seems to point towards the latter. This was a view endorsed by Juventus legend Claudio Marchisio who remarked that it was “a shame” to see Dybala “play so far from goal”.
With Max Allegri being sacked by Juventus for the manner in which Juventus stagnated, it would be fair to say that Dybala was a player caught up in this situation, perhaps unfairly, as a more attacking manager may have tried to find a more harmonious balance between Cristiano and Paulo. What is clear is that Dybala isn’t the type of player to hug the right flank and whip a cross in, he needs to be played closer to goal. For the question of whether he could operate as a right winger for Manchester United, my personal opinion would be that it would only work if he was given a free role to roam around wherever he prefers across the pitch during the game (think in the style of Messi, rather than the hybrid midfield role seen under Allegri). More importantly, his lack of output was almost certainly down to the position he was played in, as the idea of some sort of decline in ability at age 25 seems very unlikely. Dybala as a right-winger may not have scored tons of goals, but Dybala the second striker certainly did.
Key Skills
What can Paulo Dybala contribute to Manchester United that we don’t have or lack at the moment? Here are my thoughts:
Potential Formation
- Set-piece/Free-kick ability: There’s a great irony in the fact that Juventus already had two of the best free-kick takers in the world (Pjanic and Dybala) before Ronaldo joined. But this cannot be stressed enough, Dybala is an expert at free kicks, having scored 10 in Serie A but also being responsible for many key chances with his expert set-piece delivery from corners and long-distance free kicks. For a team with so much height (Pogba/McTominay/Smalling/Maguire?) having someone who can provide top-tier delivery into the box would be a massive bonus. I consider Paulo Dybala as one of the top 5 free-kick takers in the world currently.
- First touch and dribbling: An understated but important quality. Dybala’s close control is superb, with the ball practically glued to his left foot when dribbling at all times. This would be helpful in allowing us to control the tempo of games and ensure that possession is not lost cheaply. His first touch is also superb, as his most recent goal demonstrates
- Offensive versatility: As the main content of the post shows, Dybala can play in a number of different positions, ranging from second striker to attacking midfielder to false 9 to winger. This is a great level of utility, giving Ole a wide range of tactics at his disposal, especially since Martial and Rashford are also versatile forwards.
Dybala played in a number of positions at Juventus, so how can we fit him in at Manchester United? to me there seems one formation which is most likely to be used, 4-2-3-1.
------------------de Gea-------------------
----Wan Bissaka--Lindelof--Jones/New CB--Shaw----
----------McTominay----Pogba----------
-------Lingard/Pereira--Dybala--James---------
-----------------Rashford/Martial------------------
It doesn’t seem like a coincidence to me that we’ve exclusively used 4-2-3-1 in pre-season and given Juan Mata/Andreas Pereira/Angel Gomes time centrally without it being part of our tactical identity this season. Similar to 16/17 and 17/18 at Juventus, I believe he would operate in the ‘10’ role, but with the freedom to play just behind the striker. We could also see Dybala operate as a false 9 in a 4-3-3, or a second striker in a 4-3-1-2, but given that he was most successful in a 4-2-3-1 and we’ve been preparing with that formation, it all seems to add up.
TL
Ed didn’t want to get the players we ACTUALLY needed but would like a shiny new marketing toy. Fvck actually trying to improve our football team. Absolute pr1ck!
It was just after we refused to sell him because offer was few million less from what we wanted
Rojo,Jones and Young
They really think they can get More out of Lukaku
then they could with dybala.Poor lad. I hope they write that for Manzuakic when he leaves too.
Poundland Messi
Still a very good player though
Still a very good player though
Only issue with this one transfer at a time rubbish is, if he turns around and rejects us, there's a good chance Tottenham snap up Bruno and we end up with neither. That's why I'm uncomfortable with this continuing to go on.
The PR for Paulo is certainly strong
Jose ?
This thing that he wants to have a conversation with Sarri seems weird.
Of course Sarri and the management will share the same opinion and nothing will change, so what does he expect?
Perhaps it seems more like that he needs to hear it face it to face, since he might find hard to believe that they are pushing him out of the club, I can't think of a better reason.
Of course Sarri and the management will share the same opinion and nothing will change, so what does he expect?
Perhaps it seems more like that he needs to hear it face it to face, since he might find hard to believe that they are pushing him out of the club, I can't think of a better reason.
They will. If he will play as target man, he will have situation from Belgium NT. Stay in the box and wait for balls from world class players. If he goes in Juve, he will be second top goalscorer in Italy. ( Ronaldo no1 of course).They really think they can get More out of Lukaku
But imagine, just imagine if all this deals fail because we refuse to pay salary to Dybala
Sometimes you just gotta hear it straight from the horses mouth
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