Report: Kaio Jorge signing imminent

After last night’s weird left turn, the Kaio Jorge deal seems to be back on the rails.

After a week in which the 19-year-old starlet’s path seemed certain to end at Continassa in January if not sooner, a surrogate for his current club, Santos, made the outlandish claim that he in fact had two more years on his contract, which, if true, would invalidate the pre-contract agreement between the player and Juventus but would also be a flagrant violation of FIFA regulations regarding the signing of minors.

But earlier on Saturday Santos’ president admitted that the club was in a hopeless position when it came to the transfer, clearly scrapping the argument, if it was even his to begin with. Now, Romeo Agresti of Goal Italia is reporting that a deal to bring the striker to Juve immediately is imminent.

In both that article and a follow-up tweet, Agresti laid out the specifics of the deal. There will be a base transfer fee of €3 million, to be paid over two years, with another million in potential bonuses. Santos will also be entitled to five percent of any future transfer fee and right of first refusal if Juventus were to ever look to move him back to Brazil.

Jorge will be the first real acquisition of the transfer window, and figures to slide in behind Alvaro Morata on the depth chart as a No. 9. He has great potential, and Max Allegri has a good track record with young strikers over the course of his career, having shepherded the likes of Morata, Paulo Dybala, and Moise Kean to successful seasons, and even goes back far enough to the breakout of Stephan El Sharaawy in his days with AC Milan. Jorge will have to do a lot of growing up to realize that potential, but he might be in one of the best places he could be to try and do it.

Now, if the front office could perhaps put a bow on that other transfer deal that’s been giving us agita for the last two months...that’d be greeeat....