As we all wonder why Edinson Cavani never signed for Benfica despite being announced, the club’s president confirmed the reason.
There was a time when Edinson Cavani was one signature away from becoming a new Benfica player. He was even announced by some of the biggest news outlets in the city of Lisbon but nothing concrete was eventually told to the rest of the world. Something must’ve happened between those announcements and Cavani’s eventual transfer to Manchester United.
We’ve all been wondering about that during this time, and we finally have an answer. President Luis Filipe Vieira revealed some fresh information about how these negotiations went down. He spoke about Cavani’s agent and the player’s demands that pushed Benfica away from him. In fact, there’s a good chance Edinson would be an Eagle right now if he had met the club’s president in person.
“I got a written proposal where he basically asked for double of what we agreed when everything pointed at a closed deal,” said Vieira on TVI via AS. “Then I responded to tell them that we weren’t interested. If I had seen Cavani face to face, perhaps he would’ve agreed to sign a new contract with us.”
Cavani won’t make his Man United debut yet.
Now that we can get to see him as a Manchester United player, we are all waiting for his official debut. We believed that Cavani could make his return to activity against his former club in the Champions League. However, the Red Devils just announced he didn’t make the trip to Paris because he is not fit to play yet.
Keep in mind that the Uruguay international just returned to the training grounds and he’s barely starting to return to top shape. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer has been known to get his players back to fitness with a slow burn as part of his process. Nobody wants Cavani to get injured as soon as he steps on the pitch, especially after being out of the game for so long.