Wolves agree loan deal for Lille midfielder Renato Sanches

Wolves have agreed a loan deal for Lille and Portugal midfielder Renato Sanches, despite the 24-year-old currently recovering from recent knee surgery.

Sanches has resurrected his career since joining Lille from Bayern Munich in 2019. He originally joined Bayern for an initial €35m, potentially rising to €80m, in 2016 while still a teenager. But the player struggled to establish himself in Germany and later flopped on loan at Swansea.

But Sanches helped Lille win Ligue 1 last season and has once more been of interest to Premier League clubs. Liverpool were believed to have been monitoring him, while Arsenal made contact with Lille via intermediaries before eventually heading in a different direction by signing Albert Sambi Lokonga and Martin Odegaard for a combined £45m instead.

90min revealed in June from well placed sources close to the player that Sanches is ready to try and prove himself in the Premier League after the unfinished business from his time at Swansea.

Now it is Wolves who will bring him back and 90min understands that the loan agreement with Lille has been reached. The obvious issue, however, is that it could be a little while before Sanches plays because of his recent operation, which is expected to keep him sidelined for another few weeks.

Like many existing Wolves players, Sanches is a client of super-agent Jorge Mendes’ Gestifute stable and he will soon be able to count fellow countrymen Ruben Neves, Joao Moutinho, Pedro Neto, Daniel Podence, Francisco Trincao, Fabio Silva, Nelson Semedo, Jose Sa and Bruno Jordao among his new clubmates in a very Portuguese heavy squad.

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