Juve-Pisa: Iling-Junior, the story of the former Juventus player

From promise to meteor the step is short, from promise to champion it is much longer and the middle ground is probably that of Samuel Iling-Junior, ready to return to the Allianz Stadium as an opponent after four years spent in black and white between Primavera, Next Gen and First Team. Former child prodigy of Chelsea and the English national team, he said goodbye to Continassa in the summer of 2024 when the club decided to sacrifice several products from the youth sector to finance the rich signing campaign and on Saturday, in the Pisa shirt, he will once again breathe the air of the Lady with whom he would perhaps have hoped for a different epilogue.

Juve, I choose you

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Iling-Junior is from the generation of Jamal Musiala and Jude Bellingham, with them he shared his first stages in the England youth national teams. At Chelsea he shone among his peers, but with a view to his debut among the greats he immediately understood that there would be no room for him in a squad always full of top signings from all over the world. So, in 2020, before he even turned 17, he thanked the Blues for what he had received and decided to raise his head to look around, in search of a better springboard to grow and blossom. He preferred the Lady over Bayern Munich, Paris Saint-Germain and Borussia Dortmund especially for the possibility of showing off in a professional league like Serie C without having to wait for Serie A or the Premier League. And so it actually happened in the following months, until his debut with Massimiliano Allegri. Protagonist of an immediately convincing impact on the left flank – especially in the possession phase – he initially seemed projected to climb the hierarchies, but then ended up in the background in the scenario of a team in difficulty and headed towards a revolution.

with suitcases in hand

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If today it is difficult to say at what point this Juventus revolution is, Iling-Junior is certainly not part of it. In 2024 he was paid 14 million euros plus three bonuses by Aston Villa shortly after the move of Enzo Barrenechea to the same club and Douglas Luiz in the opposite direction, costing him 50 million. That return to England which could have represented a change of direction in search of more playing time did not actually turn out to be such, because for him the wandering around of loans began: six months at Bologna with a historic goal that earned the rossoblù the first victory in the Champions League, another six at Middlesbrough, then six at West Browmich Albion and finally the arrival – last January – in a Pisa team desperately looking for a shake-up.

the intersection

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So far Samuel has played three Serie A matches, but only one of which he started and for this reason it seems unlikely to see him from the first minute in the Juventus-Pisa championship. At least he will have time to enjoy that Stadium which – albeit briefly – was his and which last season he lived in for just the final eight minutes of Juventus-Bologna. For a Dean Huijsen who has already made us regret a perhaps hasty transfer, there is an Iling-Junior who has not yet blossomed as he had let on. The arduous sentence for posterity, they say in these cases, but at Juventus they are certainly in no hurry to find out. Meanwhile, as a joke, Douglas Luiz has returned to Aston Villa, on loan with the right to buy.