Report: Wolves could be offered £37m ace Guardiola called ‘quality’ in swap deal

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Douglas Costa could be offered to Wolverhampton Wanderers in a swap deal with Juventus as Jorge Mendes looks to secure a move to the Serie A champions for Adama Traore, according to TuttoJuve.

The super-agent giveth, the super-agent taketh away.

Thanks to the influence of one of football’s greatest ‘fixers’, Wolves have now added another pair of Portuguese wonder-kids to their ranks, with Vitor ‘Vitinha’ Ferreira joining from Porto after teen sensation Fabio Silva put pen to paper on a club-record £35 million move.

But it is not Mendes’ job to merely bring players to Molineux and leave them there for life.

The Iberian agent has his client’s best interests at heart and, with all due respect to an exciting, ambitious and rapidly improving Wolves side, they are no Juventus.

Joining the biggest club in Italy would undoubtedly represent a substantial step up the ladder for Traore; the jet-heeled winger who ticks plenty of boxes for a Juve side investing heavily in youth as they look to build a new dynasty under Andrea Pirlo.

Reports from Turin are suggesting that, with Juventus hit hard in the pocket by an ongoing financial crisis, they will try to convince Wolves to accept a swap deal for Traore due to their recent cash-flow problems.

While the chance to sign Aaron Ramsey or Federico Bernardeschi may be tempting, Costa’s arrival would give Nuno an immediate, ready-made replacement for the one-time Barcelona wonder-kid.

“Douglas Costa is a quality player who is hard to find because of the way he can dribble,” Pep Guardiola once said of an explosive wide man who has won titles at Bayern Munich, Shakhtar Donetsk and Juventus.

“Any coach looks for such a player. He has only been here for a month but I think he will become one of the five best wingers in the world. Douglas can achieve great things.”

The £37 million Costa started just six Serie A games in 2019/20, although it remains to be seen whether a man left on the sidelines by Maurizio Sarri has a bigger role to play under Pirlo.