Juve's scouring the scraps

Juventus took one more step to replace the six high-profile, high-paycheck players that fled from the Turin giants in the aftermath of the Serie A match-fixing scandal, by signing French defender Jean-Alain Boumsong for $5.6M from Newcastle United.

5.6 million? Is there really nobody else out there? Boumsong, never a favorite at St. James Park, moved from Rangers in January 2005 for $13.6M, and given his propensity to look just completely awful on the pitch, the Magpies were lucky to get that much for him.

Juve's desperate attempts at appealing their relegation and point deduction, mentioned in AC's article below, are indicative of the crisis in Turin. The Bianconeri have managed to earn about $75M from the sale of a good portion of their star-studded squad after they were relegated, and they've splashed out $5.6 on arguably one of the worst defenders last year in the Premier League. The lack of available talent leads me to believe that it's going to be extremely difficult to pull Juve back into Serie A in a timely manner. I don't think the competition in Serie B is much to trouble Juventus, but their acquisition of the Boumsong is an example of just how thin they really are. Check out the current squad, after the loss of Patrick Vieira, Gianluca Zambrotta, Lilian Thuram, Emerson, Fabio Cannavaro, and Zlatan Ibrahimovic.

Perhaps we'll be talking about Inter Milan for once.

-bl