Who Is Juan Cabal, The Colombian Defender Signed By Juventus?

Juan Cabal of Hellas Verona (Photo by Emmanuele Ciancaglini/Ciancaphoto Studio/Getty Images)

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Juventus have seemingly moved quickly over the last 24 hours, seeing off efforts from Inter and Lazio to sign Juan Cabal from Hellas Verona.

The Bianconeri made the move official earlier today, a statement on their website confirming they will pay €11 million ($12.01 million) over the next three years to make the deal permanent, with the player signing a five-year contract that expires in June 2029.

That represents a major profit for Hellas who, according to reports, only paid Atletico Nacional €4 million ($4.37 million) to sign Cabal in August 2022. However, the Colombian side inserted a 20% sell-on fee into that deal, meaning they will receive €2.2 million ($2.4 million) from this switch to Juve.

The acquisition makes Cabal the third Colombia native to ever pull on a Juventus shirt, following in the footsteps of Juan Cuadrado who made over 300 appearances for the club.

Back in 2015, Andrés Tello spent a year with the Turin side too, representing their under-19s, and while he never made his first team debut, the Medellín native was an unused sub as Juve beat Lazio in the Supercoppa Italiana Final.

Where did Juan Cabal’s career begin?

Born in Cali, a major hub for sport in Colombia, scouts from Atletico Nacional soon spotted Cabal’s talent and added him to the club’s youth sector in 2014 when he was 13 years old.

Five years later, he made his first appearance for the first team, going on to represent El Verde on 50 occasions over the following seasons and winning the Copa Colombia in November 2021.

Less than 12 months later, his combative style and impressive talent had caught the eye of Hellas Verona, a club who scour the globe for quality players and who have developed a good reputation for unearthing overlooked gems.

How did Juan Cabal perform for Hellas Verona

Arriving as a raw 21-year-old, Cabal took time adapting to Serie A and was clearly viewed as a reserve in the Hellas squad, failing to make a major impact as they cycled through three different managers.

He made just three starts in his first season, adding a further eight appearances off the bench for a total of just 470 minutes of action, 31 of them coming in a relegation Playoff win over Spezia.

But while coaches Gabriele Cioffi, Salvatore Bocchetti and Marco Zaffaroni all failed to regularly use Cabal, the arrival of Marco Baroni last summer appears to have been a major turning point for the defender.

The early months of 2023/24 saw him sidelined with a hamstring injury, but after returning in late November, the new boss would recognise Cabal as a regular member of the starting XI.

Deployed once on the left of a back three, he would make another 16 starts at left back and add five more sub appearances, featuring in all but two of Hellas’ final 20 games of the campaign.

One of the games he missed was due to suspension following his fifth yellow card of the season, highlighting one of three key areas where Cabal needs to improve. Indeed, throughout the 84 games of his professional career to date, he has received 19 yellow cards and two reds.

Yet those disciplinary issues have not derailed his progress, the player instead seeing the red cards he received in Colombia as important steps on his journey to improve. “Those two blows gave me a lot of experience, I learned from the mistakes,” Cabal told reporters in his homeland. “The first one was very difficult, but after the second one I felt calmer.”

That progress is reflected in the steady improvements made over his two years in Verona. According to WhoScored.com, Cabal’s contribution was vastly superior last season compared to 2022/23, with his number of tackles per 90 minutes jumping from 1.2 to 1.6, while his number of aerial duels won rose from 2.1 per 90 to 2.6.

As can be seen in the Tweet above, that was part of an overall defensive output that ranks highly among defenders across the continent, vital given that Thiago Motta’s Bologna led Serie A in tackles last term.

Yet there has also been progress at the other end of the field for Cabal. His number of successful passes per 90 minutes rose from 29.7 to 36.2, while he went from not creating a single chance in 2022/23 to providing 0.7 per 90 minutes last term.

There remains much work to be done on both his passing and crossing, but Cabal has already shown a willingness to do just that, so much so that Marco Baroni attempted to take the 23-year-old with him when he moved on to Lazio earlier this summer.

Instead it is Juventus who will seek to benefit from a rugged, versatile, maturing defender as Juan Cabal becomes the latest member of Thiago Motta’s Bianconeri revolution.

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