Every now and then football sends you a bit of a curveball, and on Thursday afternoon, former Juventus and Italian international regular, Leonardo Bonucci, did just that as he took part in a scathing interview with Sportmediaset recently to discuss his final months at the Old Lady.
In short, the 36 year old 121 capped centre half, has claimed that he felt so ‘humiliated’ by manager Massimiliano Allegri, that he now feels it is time to take legal action over the treatment he received at the end of his second spell at the Allianz Stadium.
Bonucci made the move to Union Berlin back in August as a free agent having found himself totally frozen out by Allegri at Juve and it had long been reported that the two had suffered a major fall out at some point – presumably during the summer months, as the player actually made a total of 26 appearances across all competitions during the 2022/23 campaign.
He was however, completely left out of their squad for the pre season warm up tour of the United States, and their domestic friendlies as they completed their preparations for the current 2023/24 campaign. As such, he completed his transfer ahead of the European transfer window closing, and despite having two spells at the club spanning 12 years in total, winning the Serie A title eight times and also being a European Championship winner with well over 500 career appearances to his name, it has all clearly gone sour.
“I have decided, after great suffering, to pursue a lawsuit against Juventus. I felt drained of everything, humiliated.”
He went on to add.
“My rights stipulated that I should have trained with the team regardless of the technical choice and been put in a position to physically be able to play during the following season. This was not granted to me, I no longer trained with the team. I couldn’t do what I love most. I am pursuing this cause because the people who were supposed to let me end my career with Juventus in a respectful and worthy way have not done so.”
There is sadly now a bitterness at play, no one quite knows what triggered this yet, but in Bonucci’s interview laying out his side of the argument he could not even reference Allegri by name, simply calling him ‘the coach’ when appropriate and he goes on to dispute statements that were made about his future playing career at the club, insisting he was actually offered a potential further renewal of his contract in and around October of last year, and as things stood, he knew he would fall well down the pecking order this year, and would ultimately depart at the end of the campaign – but he simply cannot tolerate what occurred over the summer.
This will undoubtedly be an interesting one to follow, but sadly for all of the wrong reasons.
Image from: unsplash.com
