Lucas Paquet\u00e1 has completed a return to Flamengo after three-and-a-half years with West Ham United, a move that ended speculation about offers from two Premier League clubs. On arrival in Rio, Paquet\u00e1 told Flamengo TV that his priority was clear and recounted how interest from England did not change his mind.<\/p>\n
\u201cTottenham called, Chelsea called,\u201d Paquet\u00e1 revealed. \u201cAnd the funny thing is that Tata [Paquet\u00e1\u2019s agent] called all excited and said, \u2018Chelsea\u2019s calling, they\u2019re gonna make an offer.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cI replied, \u2018Okay, but what about Flamengo?\u2019 He said, \u2018Are you serious?\u2019 I said, \u2018Yeah, I don\u2019t want to know about that. I want to hear about Flamengo,\u2019 and that\u2019s how it all happened.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 28-year-old elected to leave Europe and rejoin the club where he began his career. Flamengo paid West Ham \u00a335.8 million (\u20ac42 million, $49.4 million) for Paquet\u00e1, a fee described as the highest ever for transfers within North and South American football. That figure eclipsed the recent record set when Cruzeiro paid \u20ac27 million ($32 million) to sign G\u00e9rson from Zenit.<\/p>\n
Flamengo returnees and recent signings underline the club\u2019s continental ambition. Since Paquet\u00e1 departed in January 2019, Flamengo have claimed three Copa Libertadores titles and begin the season as defending Brazilian League and Libertadores champions. The squad has also added players with European experience, including Sa\u00fal N\u00edguez, Samu Lino and Jorginho.<\/p>\n
Paquet\u00e1 framed his decision in personal terms in a farewell to West Ham, writing that he wanted to \u201cfind joy in football again and regain my peace.\u201d The midfielder had been subject to an English Football Federation investigation into alleged gambling charges but was cleared. He now arrives at Flamengo hoping for consistent minutes and to position himself for selection by Brazil at the 2026 World Cup.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Paquet\u00e1 rejected Chelsea and Tottenham to rejoin Flamengo in a record \u00a335.8m deal, aiming for peace.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6369,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[969,1163,438],"tags":[983,1033],"class_list":["post-6370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-premier-league","category-transfers","category-west-ham-united","tag-agents","tag-brazilian-football"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6370","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=6370"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6370\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}