Benfica’s Florentino Luis was offered to a clutch of Premier League clubs and Serie A sides for the past two seasons, but his price tag deterred potential suitors.
He renewed his contract with the Portuguese giants in October 2022, which included a new termination clause of a whopping €120 million (US$140m).
Although he has yet to earn a senior cap for Portugal, his current value is around €30m (US$35m). This seems a reasonable amount for the midfielder who recently impressed at the FIFA Club World Cup.
Atalanta and Everton appear to be keen to secure the 25-year-old’s signature, and he is currently out of Juve’s price range until they can offload players.
With Thiago Motta’s ill-fated midfield revamp last summer ending in a costly lesson, the club are apprehensive of repeating the scenario under Igor Tudor.
Midfield misery for newcomers
There were dismal debut seasons in Serie A for Teun Koopmeiners and Douglas Luiz with the Turin titans. Dutch star Koopmeiners may avoid an exit, while Brazilian ace Luiz is expected to return to the Premier League.
Luis possesses a skill set that is similar to influential Juve midfielder Manuel Locatelli. Although he is primarily a defensive midfielder he is an exciting box-to-box ace and regularly makes short passes to retain possession.
His versatility includes dropping back into a defensive position whenever possession is lost, operating as a dynamic duo or as an anchor at the base of a midfield trio.
Tudor would seemingly benefit from signing Luis, but there’s also interest from Burnley and Napoli for the Benfica academy graduate.
Luis moved through the ranks
Luis cut his teeth in the Benfica B side and got elevated to the senior side in 2019. After Jorge Jesus took the reins following the sacking of head coach Bruno Lage in August 2020, Luis requested to be sent out on loan. He went to AS Monaco but only made two starts in 11 appearances.
The following campaign he moved to La Liga with Getafe on a season-long loan with an option to buy for €10m (US$11.6m). Manager Michel was given the boot after failing to win in the opening eight matches of the season and the club rooted to the foot of the table.
With the appointment of Quique Sanchez Flores as head coach, Luis swiftly fell out of favor. His spell at relegation-threatened resulted in just eight starting berths in a total of 24 appearances, with the Spanish side happy to ship Luis back to Benfica.
He made 33 Liga Portugal outings during the 2022/23 campaign, and played 30 league matches the following season, although the club were still keen to capitalize on making a healthy profit by selling Luis for big bucks.
There was an undisclosed Premier League club that tabled a bid of €30m (US$35m) for Luis in January, but Benfica manager Roger Schmidt was reluctant to lose a player who ended up as a regular starter towards the end of the season.
The fact that Luis only featured in 26 Liga Portgual games has prompted the player to search for a new club.
Sancho and Tonali out of reach
Luis picked up an annual salary of €1.3m (US$1.5m) at the Liga Portugal giants, so he is a more affordable and practical signing for Juve than their ambitious targets of Manchester United’s Jadon Sancho and Newcastle United’s Sandro Tonali.
Juventus have yet to bolster their squad aside from the arrival of prolific striker Jonathan David as a free agent. The club’s acquisitions this summer will be guided by finances rather than ambition.
They desperately need to sell as quickly as possible before they can make any real inroads into the transfer market, although they have a transfer kitty of €50m (US$58.4m) to play with.
Delays could mean missing out on players of the calibre of Angola-born Luis, rather than being ambitious and cherry-picking the very best players like Juventus have previously enjoyed.