Darwin Nunez has reached an agreement to leave Al Hilal Saudi Club at the end of the current campaign, bringing an abrupt end to a spell in Saudi Arabia that began less than a year ago.
The 26-year-old joined the Riyadh club last August for an initial fee of £46 million and signed a contract that paid him £400,000 per week. He managed six goals and four assists in 16 league appearances but has not featured for the team since February after being left unregistered when Karim Benzema arrived in January.
The registration squeeze that sidelined Nunez stems from Saudi Pro League rules allowing clubs to register only eight foreign players born before 2003 in their 25-man squads. That limit forced Al Hilal Saudi Club to make a choice when Benzema arrived, and Nunez was the player who lost out.
The shapes of the move and the exit are striking: Nunez left Liverpool after a three-year stint in which the club had signed him in 2021 for a fee that could have reached £85 million. At Liverpool he scored 40 goals in 143 appearances and helped the team to a Premier League title. Before that, he had burst onto the scene at Benfica, where he scored 34 goals in 41 games in his final season there.
Pressure mounted during his brief time in Saudi Arabia. His Aversion from matchday squads followed comments from his former manager, who described Nunez's work rate as "unacceptable," a criticism that underlined the mismatch between expectation and outcome. Reports now say Nunez has agreed with the club to leave at season’s end; another report said he has agreed to terminate his lucrative contract and would be a free agent in the summer.
That combination — a high-profile, costly transfer and a rapid, quiet departure — has drawn interest from across Europe. Chelsea have been credited with an interest and Juventus are reportedly monitoring the situation. Other reports in March named Chelsea and Newcastle among clubs watching his situation, and additional clubs have been said to be considering a move. At the same time, one valuation placed his estimated transfer value at about €29.6 million, a steep fall from the fees that moved him from Benfica to Liverpool and then to Al Hilal.
The arithmetic is uncomfortable for any suitor: a player who was earning an enormous weekly salary and left Riyadh without a sustained run of games, and a market that now assigns a fraction of the fee Al Hilal paid. The divide between the money spent last summer and the offers likely to emerge this summer is the central tension here — and it helps explain why the Saudi spell has been described in some quarters as a failure.
There is, however, a human through-line that survives the numbers. Former France defender Marcel Desailly has said he would recommend Nunez to Chelsea, arguing the striker is intelligent and simply needs the right environment to perform. That assessment captures both the risk and the hope: clubs looking to sign him would be buying talent that has produced at elite levels but also a player whose form and standing have clearly dipped.
What happens next is, in practical terms, straightforward: Nunez will leave Al Hilal at the end of the season and enter the summer market, likely as a free agent if the contract termination reports are accurate. The more consequential fact is less certain — whether a return to Europe will be the reset he needs, and which club will bet on rebuilding a player who arrived in Saudi Arabia with high expectations and departs carrying mixed results.
