Rumoured Tottenham swap deal doesn’t make sense for Juventus

Gazzetta Dello Sport yesterday broke a rumour about a potential swap deal that would see Giovani Lo Celso off to Turin with Dejan Kulusevski coming the other way. 

Let that sink in for second. Sounds like an idyllic proposition for Antonio Conte. But when it sounds too good to be true, it usually is. A bunch of publications piggybacked on Gazzetta Dello Sport’s speculation the minute it was published.

There is some validity to the rumour, as Tottenham is interested in the towering Juventus attacking midfielder. And there’s no secret that Lo Celso’s has struggled to impress Conte since the gaffer’s arrival, in large part due to the Argentinian’s inability to stay off of the treatment table. His latest setback occurred in the warm down after Spurs beat West Ham in the Carabao Cup quarterfinal, a match Gio didn’t feature in.

Which is exactly why this prospective deal doesn’t make sense for the Old Lady. An astute, elite club of Juventus’ lofty stature doesn’t usually risk bringing a player aboard whose list of injuries reads as long as a Michelin-star chef’s recipe book.

Juventus is in the market to sell Kulusevski, and it makes sense to offload the 21-year-old to a club ran by the man, Fabio Paratici, who brought the Swede to Turin in the first place.

But Lo Celso represents a disproportionately high risk for Juventus. If healthy, Lo Celso could improve a struggling Juventus midfield, but who knows when the 25-year-old will be able to string together a consistent run in the first team, something he has only sporadically achieved in his two years in north London.

All other factors of the potential swap deal line up and make perfect sense. And if Juventus have lost their senses and are willing to take such an unnecessary risk on a player who hasn’t come close to reaching his full potential, it will be seen as a sizeable win for Conte, Paratici and company.

Transfermarkt has Lo Celso’s current market value pegged at just under £19 million, while Kulusevski probably won’t sell for less than £30 million. Kulusevski isn’t ripping apart the Serie A by any stretch of the imagination, but he is young, full of potential and motivated to reunite with Paratici.

More than likely this rumour will fizzle out, but I hope, for the betterment of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, Juventus’ top brass has adopted a rather illogical risk-forward transfer policy and lost, even if only temporarily, their better judgement.