Former Aston Villa striker Jhon Duran has joined Benfica on a season-long loan from Saudi Arabian side Al-Nassr.<\/p>\n
The Portuguese giants will be the seventh club of Duran’s career at the age of just 22, following recent stints with Fenerbahce and Zenit St Petersburg.<\/p>\n
Benfica will pay a \u00a35.19m (6.1m euros) loan fee for the Colombia international with the option to make the move permanent for \u00a325.5m (30m euros) at the end of the 2026-27 season.<\/p>\n
“I am happy! I continue to say that it is the biggest club in Portugal. I am very grateful to be here,” said Duran.<\/p>\n
“I have very high expectations of being here. I want to play well, give my all and become champion.”<\/p>\n
Duran began his professional career with Colombian side Envigado in 2019 before earning a move to MLS team Chicago Fire in 2022.<\/p>\n
He was on the move again in January 2023 when he joined Aston Villa for \u00a314m and quickly became a fan favourite.<\/p>\n
A move to West Ham fell through in the summer of 2024, but after scoring a famous winner for Villa against Bayern Munich in the Champions League, Duran was sold to Al-Nassr for \u00a371m in January 2025.<\/p>\n
Despite scoring eight goals in 13 games for the Saudi Arabian side, he stayed for only half a season before moving to Fenerbahce on loan.<\/p>\n
But manager Jose Mourinho was sacked less than a month after Duran made his debut and the loan was cancelled in February 2026 so he could join Zenit.<\/p>\n
After bagging three goals in nine games in Russia, Duran now has the chance to make a home at Benfica, his seventh club in the seventh country of his young career.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Aston Villa striker Jhon Duran has joined Benfica on a season-long loan from Saudi Arabian side Al-Nassr.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":813918,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-813917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/813917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=813917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/813917\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/813918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=813917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=813917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=813917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}