This year’s mid-season transfer window has barely opened but there is already a lot of speculation and guesswork going on about who goes where before the end of the month. Aside from the many outlets at home trying to guess which players will join which Premier League teams, there is also a lot of chatter in foreign media outlets about the potential signings of the English teams.

One of the year’s freshest pieces of transfer gossip comes from the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf that expects one of two Premier League clubs – Wolverhampton Wanderers and West Ham United – to sign the 19-year-old forward Lassina Traoré. Of course, the player’s current club, Ajax Amsterdam, will have the final say in the matter.

Who is Lassina Traoré

Lassina Chamste Soudine Franck Traoré is a second-generation professional football player: his father, Bertrand Traoré, plays as a striker for the Premier League club Aston Villa, while his mother was captain of the Burkina Faso women’s football team.

Traoré joined his first professional football team, Rahimo FC (reportedly founded by his uncle Rahim Ouedraogo) at the age of 11. After five years playing locally, he left his home to join Ajax Cape Town (now Cape Town Spurs) for two more years before leaving Africa to play with Jong Ajax in the Netherlands.

Traoré is currently a member of both the club’s youth team, with 33 league games and 22 goals under his belt, and the first team, with 21 Eredivisie appearances and nine goals scored. Since 2017, he has participated in 11 of the Burkina Faso national team’s matches, scoring five times for his native land.

On the radar

According to the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf, both the Wolves and West Ham are interested in signing the promising youngster. Wolverhampton is reportedly looking for a striker to fill the gap left by Raúl Jiménez in the squad after the Mexican forward suffered a skull fracture in a match in November. As for West Ham, while no specifics about the team needing a new striker have been circulated, the club is reportedly interested in “revamping” its squad during this transfer window.

Is Ajax willing to let him go?

When you play an online casino game at the JackpotCity casino, you always have a 50% chance of winning. It’s either you win or you don’t. Most of the times, it doesn’t even matter – it’s the fun of the game you go to the JackpotCity for anyway. But things are simple: both you – as the player who places a wager – and Lady Luck have to be on the same page for you to pocket your reward.

Transfers are a bit like casino games but with more variables. Aside from both teams, the player also has to be on the same page for the parties to even consider starting a transfer. And this doesn’t seem to be the case this time.

When asked about Lassina Traoré’s potential transfer to England, Ajax responded that, as far as they are concerned, the answer is a big fat “no”. When he joined the Dutch club, Traoré signed a contract that keeps him at the Johan Cruijff ArenA until the summer of 2022 – and the club’s management is not yet ready to let him go.