Wojciech Szczesny is set to join Juventus after agreeing a deal in principle with the Italian champions. Juventus and Arsenal are in the final stages of concluding the deal with the fee expected to be around £10m.
The Polish international will sign a long-term contract and earn almost £70,000 a week. Szczesny, 27, has spent the past two seasons at Roma and is now ready to permanently leave the London club he joined in 2009.
Arsène Wenger already has Petr Cech and David Ospina in his squad and has made plans without Szczesny for the upcoming season. Szczesny was a regular starter for Roma during his two seasons in the capital as they finished third in 2015-16 and second last season, both times with Juventus winning the league.
Juventus already have Gianluigi Buffon in goal and Szczesny is expected to act as the Italian No1’s back-up next season. Buffon has already said that he is carrying on to play in the World Cup next summer, should Italy qualify, and there are no guarantees the 39-year-old will quit next summer either.
Szczesny told the Guardian in May: “The one thing I want to do is make sure I don’t stay still. I was quite still for five years – sometimes I played better, sometimes worse, sometimes phenomenal, sometimes rubbish. You take steps forwards and backwards. It is not very good for your head if you go up and down and up and down.
“I want to try to keep going up, with my quality and with my decisions that I make. I am 27, the best I have ever been, I still have room to improve and I want to make sure that room doesn’t stay empty. I want to go into that room. It feels like a big moment.”