Celtic were keen to take Rafa Mir to Parkhead before he swapped La Liga giants Valencia for Championship leaders Wolverhampton Wanderers.
You can hardly blame Rafa Mir for being enticed by the project taking place at Wolverhampton Wanderers, even if he did have to snub the advances of Real Madrid to move to Molineux.
Wolves are one of the rising sides in English football right now. Their Chinese owners, Fosun International, are determined to make the club a giant of the domestic game while ties with super-agent Jorge Mendes have given access to players Wolves fans would never have dreamed seeing in the famous gold kit.
After Diego Jota, Ruben Neves and Ivan Cavaleiro, Rafa Mir is just the latest hugely gifted talent to join the Wolves revolution.
Although time will tell whether he has made the right decision upon leaving Valencia for the Black Country. Wolves were not the only British club keen to lure Mir away from La Liga, after all.
According to Super Deporte in 2017, Celtic were keen to take Mir to Glasgow after he caused their youth side no end of problems during a UEFA Youth League clash against Valencia in the second half of last season.
And the prospect of one of Europe’s most exciting young goal-scorers, one who scored 15 goals in 19 games for Valencia B in 2017/18, linking up with Brendan Rodgers at Parkhead is nothing other than fearsome.
There are few managers on the continent who have a better track record when it comes to moulding raw talent into top level talent, Raheem Sterling, Joe Allen and Moussa Dembele just some of the players Rodgers has nurtured during his coaching career.
Dembele was like Mir when he signed for Celtic in 2016 – a hugely gifted prospect who needed a stage to shine. One year later he had 32 goals, three trophies and a £30 million price-tag on his head.
Mir will certainly be a Premier League player for Wolves next year, but would he have developed better, and faster, at Celtic?
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