Everton & Leicester's chase for the £25m man who could galvanise their midfield

The chances are that Leicester City and Everton will both need all the help they can get in midfield this summer. Both are set to lose key players in the heart of the park – Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall will join Chelsea, while Amadou Onana is expected to depart Goodison Park once his run with Belgium at Euro 2024 wraps up. All in all, it’s no shock to see both players linked with the very same player – Benfica’s Florentino Luís.

Sport Witness have picked up on reports from Portugal which suggest that the tough tackling 24-year-old – who has represented his country more than 80 times at various different age groups – is a €30m (£25.4m) target for both teams. But as they gear up for what could be long, tough seasons, is Luís the kind of player who can make the difference in a potential relegation dogfight?

Seasoned by loan spells with Monaco and Getafe, Luís returned to Benfica for the 2022/23 season and firmly established himself as a first-team regular, playing 63 league games over the last two seasons as Benfica finished first and second in the Portuguese top flight – and he has been hugely impressive in the process.

A tough-tackling, energetic player who is always looking for chance to press opponents and put out fires, he playing style has drawn comparisons with N’Golo Kanté and while that’s a pretty high bar to be asked to clear, he is doing a solid job so far – over the last year he averaged an enormous 4.23 successful tackles per game along with 2.63 interceptions.

Those colossal numbers, when placed alongside his heat maps for the season, which transform the entirety of the midfield into a single red blob, tell the story of the kind of player Luís is. He has endless stamina, determination and the capacity to close down attacks and force turnovers all over the pitch.

He does have limitations as a player. His passing is tidy and organised rather than expansive, although he still generates a healthy number of accurate forward passes to get moves going despite the fact that he rarely head upfield himself – he has just one senior goal in his 142 professional senior matches, and only five assists. He is not a creator, but is an intelligent and economical player who uses possession sensibly without taking risks.

And while both teams will surely need players who can increase their goal threat – Leicester by virtue of being a newly-promoted side with a new head coach and Everton because goals were seldom easy to come by under Sean Dyche last season – Luís is certainly the sort of midfield who can add the extra defensive grit and control of possession which a bottom-half side badly needs.

It isn’t necessarily clear that Benfica will be willing to sell, at least for a reasonable price. Luís has a contract which runs until 2027 and which has a massive €120m (£101.8m) minimum fee release clause, an amount which certainly isn’t in either Leicester or Everton’s wheelhouse. As it stands, this remains rumour although the Sport Witness article does claim that Leicester have prepared a bid, without suggesting it has been lodged or making any claims about its size.

But if it this deal is real, and if Benfica are amenable to a price point which suits either side, this looks a lot like a deal which both teams should do everything possible to make happen. It’s true that plenty of seemingly exceptional players have fallen short once asked to make the step up from a similar level, but all the current indicators are that Luís has the physical and technical skills, as well as the sheer grit and determination, to be an exceptional ball-winning midfielder at a very high level. Leicester and Everton fans should both hope that it’s their club he heads for next.