Emre Can “Honoured” by Juventus Interest

In less than three months, Emre Can can sign a pre-contract agreement with another club, most likely Juventus, and then, next summer, depart from Liverpool on a free. If he does, he will be 24 years old when he leaves and have played at least 138 games for the club.

With no talk of movement towards a new contract in at least a month now, it has come to seem increasingly likely that would happen. This week, the player seems to have taken another step towards that future, speaking to Kicker about the honour of Juventus’ interest.

“It’s always an honour to receive an offer from such a renowned club,” he told the paper while on international duty, where he helped Germany beat Azerbaijan 5-1 on Sunday. “Currently I’m only focused on the season with Liverpool so my agent takes care of the rest.”

Liverpool managed to steal Can from Bayer Leverkusen in 2014 for less than £10M, triggering a release clause written to block Bayern Munich from returning for their former academy player that had not seemed to account for the fact some other club might come for him.

Over the past year, he has resisted a new Liverpool contract due to a desire to receive both top-line wages and a low release clause that would protect the player against the possibility of limited playing time—giving him a way out if he wasn’t starting often enough.

Liverpool were willing to raise his weekly wages to around the £100k mark, but were not willing to do both that and set a low release clause for the player, and the two sides have been in standoff as a result. There’s still time to change that, of course, but time is running out.

"The Premier League is just a really cool league, the most interesting in the world,” Can added. “But you must always respect other big clubs and leagues."