Villarreal have completed a club-record transfer by signing Renato Veiga from Chelsea. The 22-year-old joins on a long-term contract, with the deal reported as \u20ac24.5m plus up to \u20ac5m in variables, a package that could be worth up to \u20ac29.5m. That figure surpasses the previous club record held by Paco Alcacer at \u20ac25m. The club underlined the scale of the acquisition in its announcement video using the motif \u2018All in\u2019. <\/p>\n
Veiga has committed to a seven-year deal at La Ceramica. His arrival is part of a clear defensive recruitment drive: Logan Costa (\u20ac18m) and Willy Kambwala (\u20ac10m) arrived last summer, Santiago Mourino joined this year for \u20ac10m from Atletico Madrid, and Napoli defender Rafa Marin arrived on loan with an option to make the move permanent for \u20ac15m next summer. The total outlay on central defenders over the last two seasons stands at \u20ac62.5m. <\/p>\n
Injuries to Kambwala and Costa, which will keep them sidelined for around four months and six to nine months respectively, have influenced the club\u2019s spending. Veiga was keen on the move and had signed off on it several weeks ago, and Villarreal secured a signing that attracted interest from Juventus, Borussia Dortmund and Atletico Madrid. <\/p>\n
Veiga is a versatile player who can operate in central defence, at left-back and in midfield. He began his professional career at Sporting CP, spent a season on loan at Augsburg two years ago, then moved to FC Basle. Chelsea paid \u20ac14m to sign him, and he spent last January on loan at Juventus. Veiga has expressed an ambition to make Roberto Martinez\u2019s Portugal squad for the 2026 World Cup. Marcelino Garcia Toral called him on several occasions to persuade him to join Villarreal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Villarreal sign Renato Veiga from Chelsea in record deal; \u20ac24.5m plus up to \u20ac5m in variables. Update<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1950,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190],"tags":[182],"class_list":["post-1951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","tag-transfers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1951"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1951\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1952,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1951\/revisions\/1952"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}