From the reports which came out of Italy over the weekend, you’d be forgiven for believing West Ham’s Jean Clair Todibo was on the verge of leaving London Stadium to become a Juventus player. Todibo, you’ll recall, is currently on a loan deal at West Ham from French club Nice, with the East London Club having an obligation to buy the Frenchman for £34.22m (40m euros) in 2025.
When rumours first emerged last week regarding the possibility of West Ham’s central defender leaving for Juventus, we approached our high-ranking source at West Ham for a response. In Claret and Hugh on Friday, we reported the response: Jean Clair Todibo wasn’t moving.
If you recall, the exact response to our query about Juventus taking over Todibo’s deal was met with:
“No. They just want to loan him for season and he’s injured- and we only have three centre backs so total non-runner”.
Which seemed pretty clear to us.
However, even after this rebuttal, this weekend Italian Journalist Gianluca DiMarzo wrote his article’West Ham & Juventus agree formula for transfer of unhappy defender” and further reports emerged this week from getfootballnewsitaly.com claiming that: ” Juventus player pushing for club to sign West Ham’s Jean-Clair Todibo”.
And today from footitalia.com came :”Juventus Eye Premier League Talent as Todibo Deal Nears Completion”.
So, for the avoidance of doubt, and to see if West Ham’s stance on parting with Jean Clair Todibo had changed since Friday to justify all of these headlines, we went back to our source inside West Ham for clarification, suggesting that ‘the Todibo rumours are really building up: Is there any way we [West Ham] can get out of the transfer if Juve take it over?
Our source responded pretty emphatically – and I use the exact words here:” NO and we need him as we only have 3 CB’s at the club at the moment”.
Which I’d say is a pretty emphatic denial of any rumour or story linking Jean-Clair Todibo with the Juventus’ move stories or an imminent exit from West Ham United.
