The mega £75m Arsenal and Juventus swap transfer deal that could break the internet

Over the course of the past week, the rumour mill has been fixated on one particular deal which it believes could be struck over the course of the next year or so – a deal for Juventus prodigy Kenan Yildiz.

Arsenal have been linked, Chelsea are in the conversation, and Manchester United are even rumoured to be lining up a bid worth as much as €90m (£78.5m) according to different media outlets. It’s a story that’s starting to dominate the gossip columns as we inch towards the January transfer window.

One new story from TeamTalk was especially interesting – because it suggests that Arsenal, whose name is cropping up in connection with Yildiz on a daily basis, could try to beat the competition with a sensational swap deal that would see them spend €50m (£43.5m) and send Gabriel Jesus to Turin as part of the deal. But will it work, and would it reshape Arsenal’s attack in the way that Mikel Arteta wants?

Will Arsenal engineer a swap deal for Kenan Yildiz in 2026?

Swap deals, once an extreme rarity in football, are starting to creep back into the transfer market thanks to the way UEFA’s financial rules work – and, as it happens, the way that the Premier League’s profit and sustainability rules work too. Such part-exchange deals make it easier to amortise money for both parties involved. The kind of transfer stories that were once rather fanciful are now more plausible than ever.

Still, there are quite a few complications involved in any bid for Yildiz, and finding the right price point isn’t the only issue. For starters, almost all of the reports coming out of Italy suggest that Juventus would really rather not sell the 20-year-old, whose recent performances have marked him out as a star not only of the future, but of the present.

The youthful Turkey international has already scored twice in eight appearances this season having hit three in four games at the Club World Cup over the summer. His performances are getting better at an impressive rate and his production rising rapidly.

Small wonder, then, that Juventus want to keep hold of him – and they already have him tied down to a contract which doesn’t run down until 2029. The Serie A side have all of the leverage, especially given that are no indications that Yildiz himself is likely to try and force a move in the immediate future.

Still, Premier League sides have the financial clout to twist an Italian team’s arm, even one as well-off as Juventus, and the total price of the package that Arsenal are allegedly pulling together (the report claims that they are already in contact with Yildiz’s agent) would be around £75m given the likely valuation of Jesus. That sort of money could prove rather tempting.

Much would depend on whether Juventus are overly keen on Jesus, and that’s a judgement that can’t be made until the Brazilian return from his ACL injury, something likely to happen around the turn of the year. If the 28-year-old shows signs of being somewhere close to his best when he returns, he could be a tempting makeweight, but that’s far from guaranteed.

Even if Jesus does shrug such a serious injury off, however, it’s not clear that Juventus will be in the market for a striker. Dušan Vlahović is likely to leave on a free transfer but they have invested in Jonathan David and Loïs Openda, so Jesus is only liable to be of interest if one of those two flops. Admittedly, they only have one league goal between them since joining, so that may not be such a distant prospect.

Still, if Arsenal want Yildiz, then the chances are that they will have to part with cold, hard cash – and quite a lot of it. Juventus hold all of the cards and there is no reason that they should feel forced to sell for a low price. This won’t be any easy deal to get done, and a swap deal for Jesus seems unlikely at an admittedly distant juncture.

Would signing Yildiz and selling Jesus improve Arsenal’s attack?

Before he ruptured his ACL in January, Jesus was becoming an increasingly peripheral figure for Arsenal, starting just six Premier League matches in 2024/25 prior to the injury – now, with the arrival of Viktor Gyökeres, his position in the squad has become rather tenuous.

Jesus has never recaptured the form of his first few years in England with Manchester City, but while it’s almost impossible to find a meaningful statistical marker which hasn’t dipped considerably since 2019, he was at least playing rather more effectively than he had during a disappointing 2023/24 campaign.

Jesus was back up to a scoring rate of better than a goal every 180 minutes for the first time since 2019/20 and was finishing his chances more efficiently that any other point in his career, according to the xG model. That doesn’t mean that he looked like the line-leading striker that Arsenal needed, but he didn’t look like a player who should be discarded too quickly. He had, quietly, been playing pretty well before disaster struck.

With Gyökeres enduring a slow start and Kai Havertz now having suffered two serious knee injuries in relatively quick succession, there is a case to be made for staying patient with Jesus and seeing whether he’s still required as a rotational option. Still, the economic reality is that he will likely be sold next summer if Arsenal can find a buyer – in a year’s time, the Brazilian will have just one year left on his deal and at 28 now, his transfer value is unlikely to increase.

The value of signing Yildiz, meanwhile, will depend heavily on how Gabriel Martinelli, Leandro Trossard and Eberechi Eze perform this season. Eze is currently operating mostly as a number ten, in part due to injuries to Martin Ødegaard, but if he plays well on the left and Martinelli recaptures some of his best form, then Yildiz may be left as an expensive luxury at £75m or more.

Martinelli, however, is not showing too many signs of rediscovering the scintillating form of three years ago. Yildiz is a more well-rounded player, a better playmaker, technician and perhaps a more efficient finisher based on the stats from the last 18 months or so. The only real advantage Martinelli has on current form is his raw pace.

Yildiz usually operates in a slightly deeper role than Arteta’s current system calls for but the Spaniard has been flexible and adaptable with his tactics before and there are few reasons to think that the Turk couldn’t thrive in a more advanced role as a traditional inside forward rather than as a winger who works more closely with the midfield, the role he takes up for Juventus in most games now.

Yildiz is an immense talent and likely an upgrade on Martinelli based on what we’ve seen since the start of last season – but there is a world in which Arsenal are best off spending that money elsewhere, especially if Martinelli can turn things around, and at least some chance that involving Jesus in a deal would be a risk given the broader state of Arsenal’s front line.