Benfica have a problem that looks a lot like a windfall.
Arsenal are reportedly leading the chase for Gianluca Prestianni, with Bayern Munich, Paris Saint-Germain, Newcastle and Aston Villa all tracking the Argentine, according to Get Football News France. The number any of them keep coming back to is the €100m release clause already written into his contract in Lisbon.
That is why the Lisbon club are trying to rewrite the deal before January. A preliminary agreement reported by ysscores.com would extend Prestianni to 2031 and almost double his wages while leaving the €100m exit price in place.
12 goals, six assists and a label he does not want
The on-pitch argument for the money is easy to lay out. Prestianni has scored 12 goals and provided six assists in 20 appearances across all competitions this season, playing mainly on the left wing, per Get Football News France. Vélez Sarsfield, his boyhood club in Buenos Aires, still holds a 15% share of any future sale.
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Portuguese and Argentine outlets have reached for the “next Messi” label so often that Prestianni has started batting it away himself. After Benfica’s Europa League win over Lech Poznań on 5 November, he told Sport TV, via Notícias ao Minuto:
“I’m still a kid, I’m 20 years old, and I work day by day at Benfica.”
The comparison was already looking strained. A Polígrafo fact-check in October found that Nazareno Gomez of Managua FC had more goal contributions than Prestianni across the opening months of 2026/27, which puts the Benfica forward third on that leaderboard rather than second behind Lionel Messi.
Why January looks like the wrong window
PSG’s interest is live but not urgent. Get Football News France reports that the chances of Prestianni arriving in Paris in the coming weeks are “very slim,” with a French move pencilled in for a later window instead.
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For Arsenal, that leaves a familiar dilemma. They are reportedly first in the queue, but the live extension talks and the €100m number together make a mid-season raid the most expensive kind of winter business. If the new deal is signed before the window opens on 1 January, the release clause becomes the only lever that still works, and at €100m few bidders will reach for it in January rather than waiting for the summer.
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