Lucas Piazon rumored to be joining Rio Ave on loan from Chelsea

With a week left in the 2019 summer (European) transfer window, there are still a few Chelsea player who’ve yet to sort out their futures. One of them is largely forgotten man Lucas Piazon who’s now going on his ninth year on Chelsea’s books while remaining about as far as he’s ever been from actually playing for the team.

The 25-year-old briefly joined first-team training in July in Dublin, but was among the first batch of players to head back to London and start looking for loans or transfers. For Piazon, that process is still ongoing, but if reports are to be believed, he could be heading to Portugal next. It should be noted that the reporting on this one is fairly dubious, but there’s been little action on Piazon so far and time’s running out.

As per TuttoMercatoWeb in Italy, where he last tried his luck (managing just a handful of games for Chievo), and picked up by multiple Portuguese outlets since, the one-time “Next Kaká” is heading to Rio Ave on a two-year loan (2-year!), which would also mean that he’d sign a new Chelsea contract in the process since his current one ends at the end of this season.

Piazon was briefly linked with Besiktas in a €5m transfer recently, but if such a transfer cannot be secured, signing an extension and heading out on loan is a serviceable fallback option. Whether via a buy-option or some other instrument, Chelsea could then still collect a few million on Piazon if and when he leaves for good.