Report: Douglas Costa doesn’t want to leave Juventus

Douglas Costa’s two seasons with Juventus have been two very different kind of overall products. One has been very, very good with assists galore and the other was ... nothing really close to that of Costa’s first season with the Italian champions.

Because of what happened in Costa’s second season with Juventus, many believe that he will be one of the players to leave Turin this summer. He’s still a player who has value on the transfer market, and, regardless of who Juve’s next manager ends up being (even though we know who it will be), is most definitely an expendable piece amongst a group of talented attacking players.

Except there’s now this: Douglas Costa doesn’t want to leave.

At least, that’s the word from the Corriere Torino on Sunday, with a report stating that the 28-year-old Brazilian winger expressing to Juventus management that he wants to stay around and spend a third season in Turin. This has come on the back of Costa being one of the main names being thrown out there as a possible player that would be included to try and bring down the transfer fee if Juve were to try to bring Paul Pogba back to the club this summer.

Now, let’s just throw this out there: Is Costa still a useful player the way that Juventus’ roster is currently constructed? Well, yeah. When he’s right, like he was for pretty much the entire second half of the 2017-18 season, then he’s a valuable player to have on your roster no matter if he’s coming off the bench or a consistent starter.

The problem was that the version of Costa — one of Juventus’ highest-paid players — we saw this past season was much, much different from the one two years ago. Costa never really got things going last season, with inconsistent playing time, spitting on opposing players and a handful of injuries stunting any kind of continued standout performances from the 2017-18 campaign. He played all of 620 Serie A minutes, not recording an assist after recording the second-highest amount of assists (12) in the 2017-18 season.

So you could see why Costa would want a shot at redemption with Juventus. And knowing that Juventus’ (likely) future manager is one that has a very offensive kind of system — although not one really known for squad rotation — you could also understand why Costa would want to stick around. Whether he actually does, though, is another matter.