Superagent Jorge Mendes meets with Chinese club, Diego Costa, James Rodriguez rumors ensue

So here’s the corollary to the Diego Costa “bust-up” rumors, which had an undertone of Chinese Super League millions to it from the beginning.

While no one’s disputing that superagent Jorge Mendes met with the chairman of a Chinese club earlier on Friday — there is picture proof, after all — this meeting was used to sell James Rodriguez stories just 10 hours prior to the Diego Costa BLAZING ROW eruption.

That doesn’t mean either one of is true or false; Jorge Mendes represents a ton of big stars and he’s been the agent perhaps most instrumental in getting a lot of big stars a lot of big paychecks in China. He is truly a master of his agenting craft. But rumors are rumors and these ones certainly sound juicy.

According to Simon Johnson’s report, Tianjin Quanjian (not to be confused with Mikel’s new club, Tianjin TEDA) are willing to offer north of £80m for Costa and give him over half a million, £570k to be exact, per week. PER. WEEK. This is the same club who just signed Axel Witsel from Zenit and are currently managed by Italy legend Fabio Cannavaro.

Costa, who’s missed the last few days of training apparently (two or three, depending on who and what you believe), is far from under-compensated at Chelsea, but these guys are offering him four times what he’s making here, possibly more if we account for taxes. Sporting ambitions are great and all that, but that amount of money is no laughing matter.

Perhaps not coincidentally, there are renewed rumblings of Romelu Lukaku still dreaming of Chelsea (here’s Kristof Terreur talking about that on a podcast).

That said, with all reports insisting that Chelsea aren’t willing to sell, there’s a good chance all this will blow over in a few days or weeks. Conte and Costa will hug it out, his back will get patched up, and we’ll go back to winning games and scoring goals and maintaining our lead at the top of the table.

Any other outcome at this point is just too head-shakingly disappointing to think about.