With his quick rise from Juventus’ primavera squad to the big time in about a year’s time, Kenan Yildiz has been one to garner a whole lot of interest over his still-short time in Turin. With what the 18-year-old Yildiz did over the weekend — scoring an extremely pretty goal on his first start with the Turkish national team — the interest level has been cranked up quite a bit.
Both before and after that goal for Turkey, Yildiz has very much been the object of desire of many clubs around Europe even though he has gotten the permanent call-up to Juve’s senior team.
And just because playing time hasn’t been all that plentiful, it doesn’t mean there are plans to see him head out on loan for the second half of the 2023-24 season.
That is according to Italian transfer reporter Nicolo Schira, who says that while there have been teams asking for information regarding a potential Yildiz loan spell come the January transfer window, it doesn’t mean Juventus are even interested in that kind of move. Juve, just like they did over the summer when there were clubs trying to sign Yildiz outright, have essentially given a “thanks but no thanks” kind of signal when it comes to their intention to let Yildiz go out on loan to gain some more playing time akin to somebody like Matias Soulé.
Some clubs have already asked info for Kenan #Yildiz on loan from January to June 2024, but #Juventus are not interested. #Juve had also turned down 2 important bids last summer, because they didn’t want to sell the turkish and they consider him a future top player. #transfers
— Nicolò Schira (@NicoSchira) November 20, 2023
That means, basically, Yildiz is going to be around to fight for his playing and potentially take advantage of any injuries or squad rotation once Juventus enter the fray in the Coppa Italia come the new year.
Depending on how you look at it, it’s either an extremely talented player who won’t turn 19 years old until early May being around much more experienced senior squad players and learning from them. Or, it’s an 18-year-old who would probably benefit greatly from much more consistent playing time at this stage in his development. The good thing is that the Juventus Next Gen squad can still call him up for a limited number of games, so he’s still going to be playing senior level games even on some weekends when he’s not given any run my Max Allegri. And knowing that the likes of Federico Chiesa and Dusan Vlahovic don’t exactly have the best injury records over the last 12 months or so, there’s always the chance that Yildiz will be needed at some point seeing as the next few months will be busier than the first third of the schedule.
No matter what, though, every sign points to Yildiz staying right where he is and not putting on another club’s jersey for five or six months come the new year. That should do nothing to take away from the fact that Juve view him as a big-time talent for the future.