Ultimatum to Mariano

He Benfica wants to know now if Mariano is willing to sign. The Lisbon club reached an agreement in principle with Madrid in a transfer format (with a purchase option, which would be 20 million euros) but the forward's 'yes' is missing. As AS learned, the Portuguese entity expect a response in the next few hours and Mariano's salary continues to be the main stumbling block.

He nine earns in Madrid 4.2 million net per year, a figure that forces Benfica to step on dangerous ground. The salary limit in the dressing room of the embodied team is € 2.5M and the club does not want to exceed € 4M net (€ 8M counting taxes) for a year of loan. The player, as they insist from Portugal, he would even want to improve his salary and go on to enter € 5M for playing in Da Luz the 2020-21 season. A common practice, that of requesting a salary increase, among Madrid players who are forced to leave on loan.

However, and although Madrid presses with that principle in accordance with Benfica, Mariano has never actively moved to leave Chamartín. His own rep was more than cold on Or Jogo last Saturday: “If there is an agreement between the clubs, it seems very strange to me that no one Benfica has spoken to me or Mariano, that is not how a player is convinced to go to another club… “On Madrid's return to work this Monday, from Benfica, Mariano is expected to reconsider once he sees again on the spot that he begins another season behind Benzema and Jovic. But the portuguese club is not getting a good feedback and he already came out frustrated from the attempt to sign Cavani, to which he did make an offer well above his possibilities given the player's cache and his media weight.

Mariano is one of the players key in output operation that Madrid wants to start because last season he barely played 86 minutesYes, an amount disproportionately low for its cost in the team's payroll. The attacker rejected all previous approaches from other clubs because he always insisted to his relatives that he sees himself playing for Madrid. That goal to Barcelona in the last Clásico and the minutes in the next game against Betis fed a flame that extinguished the stoppage due to the coronavirus and the second chance that Madrid has given Jovic. Meanwhile, Benfica waits, but wants an answer now.