Report: Arthur Melo giving ‘significant signals’ he’ll accept a Juventus move

It wasn’t even 24 hours ago that Sky Sport Italia transfer Gianluca Di Marzio was telling us that something noteworthy was going to happen on the Arthur Melo-to-Juventus transfer front in relatively short order. We didn’t know what exactly, but when you dangle that kind of carrot in front of us all you better deliver the goods — at least that’s what I think.

So what did we get?

Well, some good news if you’re hoping to see Arthur play for Juventus in a few months.

According to Di Marzio on Wednesday, the 23-year-old Brazilian midfielder is “is giving significant signals he’ll accept” a move to Juventus after being rather hesitant about it and quite steadfast in his desire to stay at Barcelona over the course of the last month. This comes a day after Sky Sports News in the United Kingdom reported that Juventus and Barcelona had agreed to an €80 million valuation for Arthur. And while the valuations that Di Marzio reported are a little lower than what his counterparts in the U.K. said, the fact that there is more and more optimism that Arthur will accept the other half of the deal that would see Miralem Pjanic head to Spain.

More from Di Marzio:

The clubs reached an agreement for the valuation of the players: Pjanic is valued at € 60 million while Arthur at € 75 million, so Juventus will have to add about € 10 million in set fee plus € 5 million in bonuses. The last step involves Arthur giving his final approval, the Brazilian midfielder is now much more convinced by the destination and is giving significant signals he’ll accept.

You will notice the first part of that report where Di Marzio talks about transfer fees is where things differ from what we heard a day ago. In that report, Arthur was valued at €80 million, Pjanic at €70 and the difference was €10 million extra that Juve would send to Barcelona in the deal. This version, which obviously could more a lot more accurate based on Di Marzio’s reliability on these things, would have Juve sending €5 million more than originally though if some bonuses are reached.

But, like we’ve been saying all along, the big sticking point in this deal happening or going totally up in smoke has been Arthur’s willingness to accept a move to Juventus.

We’ve heard that he was becoming more and more open to a move.

We then heard that his willingness to sign with Juve might not be as willing as we thought.

Now, according to Di Marzio, that willingness is back and Juventus could very well be trying to strike a deal while the iron is hot — which, knowing how things may be completely unpredictable in the upcoming transfer window, would probably be a good idea.