Schrödinger’s Transfer: Paulo Dybala deal looks to be off again

Imagine there’s a box. Inside the box is Juventus forward Paulo Dybala and connected to it is Mauro Icardi holding a hammer over a vial of poison gas. Depending on whether Inter Milan allows Icardi to leave for Juventus, he’ll either fly into a rage and smash the poison vial, killing Dybala, or not, sparing him and allowing Dybala to transfer to Tottenham Hotspur. Or maybe Icardi decides to smash it out of a fit of pique anyway because, let’s face it, he’s Mauro Icardi.

With me so far?

So in this thought experiment, the transfer of Dybala to Tottenham Hotspur could be considered both dead and not...

[checks box]

...Okay, it’s dead, forget it.

According to two new English sources — Ed Aarons of the Guardian and Miguel Delaney of the Independent, the on-again-off-again transfer of Dybala to Spurs is now once again off, with conflicting reports suggesting that either Juventus refused to sanction a deal because they wanted a replacement (i.e. Icardi) in first, or because of hangups over wages, or possilby Dybala’s image rights which are owned by a shady Maltese company because reasons.

It’s worth noting that Delaney still holds one possible avenue for the deal to go through, involving the loan with an obligation to buy theory that we posted earlier. But that seems somewhat unlikely and even Delaney admits it.

Either way, it doesn’t look like it’s happening. But if you believe in quantum theory, there’s a universe where Dybala is already in London completing a medical, the box has been flattened in a rage by Adrien Rabiot’s “momgent” Veronique after someone took a picture of her baby without her permission, and Mauro Icardi has died of radiation poisoning.

What I’m saying is that I was always bad at science.