David Luiz has been offered a £33,000-a-week contract at Benfica as the veteran defender closes in on a move away from Arsenal, Brazilian football expert Jorge Nicola says on his YouTube channel.
The poodle-haired Brazilian has never hid his desire to return for a second spell at the Estadio da Luz.
Whether he’s willing to take a major pay cut to make that dream a reality, however, we’ll have to wait and see.
Luiz’s £100,000-a-week Arsenal contract will expire on 1 July.
And while Benfica would jump at the chance to bring back a popular figure sold to Chelsea a decade ago, the Portuguese giants are only willing to offer Luiz a fraction of the pay packet he takes home at the Emirates.
“I spoke to (Luiz) yesterday. We have a father-to-son relationship,” Benfica president Luis Filipe Vieira told Record a year ago, admitting at the time talks regarding a return to Lisbon were under way.
“What he earns (at Arsenal) is unthinkable for Benfica to pay. If David Luiz comes to a day when he says ‘I want to leave here’, if he is 35 years old, in perfect condition, we will take David Luiz, of course.”
The implication was clear.
Benfica wouldn’t turn down a chance to sign a player who won the Primeira Liga alongside Ramires, Angel Di Maria and Oscar Cardozo in 2009/10.
But to make the homecoming happen, Luiz has to do his bit. And that means taking a massive pay cut.
If clubs from America, China or the Middle East are willing to put a money-spinning deal on the table, Luiz may have a difficult decision to make.
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