Wolves star Joao Gomes close to agreeing move to Champions League giant

Atletico Madrid are close to agreeing a deal for Wolves midfielder Joao Gomes, talkSPORT understands.

The two parties are nearing a verbal agreement worth around €45million (£38.9million).

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Atleti still also have verbal terms in place with Ederson, but no agreement with Atalanta, with Manchester United also presenting terms to the player.

talkSPORT exclusively revealed Atleti’s interest in Gomes last month.

Joao about that?

The 25-year-old moved to Molineux in 2023 from Flamengo.

Gomes has gone on to make nearly 130 appearances across all competitions for Wolves – 114 of which have come in the Premier League.

However, the 2025/26 campaign has been one to forget for the midfielder as Wolves have already been relegated from the English top flight.

Rob Edwards‘ side were confirmed as a Championship club on April 20 following West Ham‘s goalless draw with Crystal Palace.

Relegation had been a matter of when, not if for Wolves, given they had been in the bottom three for the entirety of the season.

With Wolves’ impending return to the Championship, a string of summer exits loom as Edwards works out who wants to remain on board at the club.

However, Edwards is under pressure at Wolves after he copped an earful from supporters following a 1-1 draw against a ten-man Sunderland last Saturday.

Edwards: Wolves have been forced to play ‘survival football’

Yet Edwards, who was appointed last November as Vitor Pereira’s replacement, insisted that the club’s predicament was ‘not my fault’.

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“It’s a thing that’s been going on for a long time,” Edwards said on Friday.

“We came into this situation, so I feel energised by what we’re going to be able to do and the difference that we’re going to make going forward.

“We’re going to have to ride out this difficult period now and stay strong.

“It’s always going to be the case. It’s different to a difficult period that we had towards the end at Luton where we’d done some really good things and then obviously we were able to have a full pre-season with a new group and things weren’t able to quite go the way we wanted to go.

“This is different. We’ve come in to a team that hasn’t won for ages on two points in the Premier League.

“We’ve not been able to play the way we want to play. We’ve been playing survival football and trying to keep confidence levels and keep a minimum level of hard work and what it looks like to compete.

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“It’s been challenging. It’s been completely different to any other time that we’ve experienced before but I knew it was going to be because there’s not many people who would have come in to this situation either.”

Edwards and Gomes will look to give the long-suffering Wolves supporters something to cheer about on Saturday when they travel to Brighton, with kick-off scheduled for 3pm.