Rui Costa sets budget for António Silva replacement at Benfica | OneFootball

Following the departure of António Silva, signing a centre-back is the top priority for Benfica’s SAD. After identifying several names and making exploratory contacts, the Benfica hierarchy has already set the deadline for the intended signing as well as the amount they are willing to spend.

According to Record, the aim is to make the new centre-back official in the coming days, ideally by the start of next week, and Rui Costa does not intend to spend more than €15 million on the new defender.

At this stage, Marco Silva only has three centre-backs at his disposal, one of them being Gabriel Índio, an 18-year-old who arrived at the Luz this summer. At present, the club’s board wants to increase the number of options available to the coaching staff, also because of concerns that Tomás Araújo or Clément Lenglet could suffer a physical setback.

Stepán Chaloupek was one of the names under consideration, but the Czech player prefers a move to the Premier League, where he has interested clubs. Davidson Sánchez, Josip Sutalo, Tiago Gabriel and Ibrahima Ba were the other names linked, but without any major developments.

Benfica return to action next Thursday, 6 August, against Hearts of Scotland. The match against the "Jambos", valid for the first leg of the Europa League third qualifying round, will be played at the Estádio da Luz, with kick-off scheduled for 20:00.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇵🇹 here.