Ninety-two days ago Paris put Lucas Lopes Beraldo on the market. Since then they've listed him three times at three different prices, and the on-chain bid table for him is still empty.

The current ask is 160M SVC. It's an asking price, not an offer. The auction hasn't started because no club has met the minimum.

Here's how the price has come down:

• 25 July: listed at 200M
• 3 August: relisted at 180M
• 20 August: relisted at 160M. That was the same morning Paris paid Toulouse 17.27M for Gilberto Rafael Mora Zambrano

The current listing is 66 days old. There have been no bids on any of the three.

The player

Beraldo is a 22-year-old Brazilian rated 92, with 92 tackling and 90 passing. He plays mainly at centre-back and can also cover left-back and centre midfield. He's valued at 38.3M, earns 510,420 SVC in wages and has two seasons left on his contract.

He's also playing well. This league season he has 21 appearances (seven off the bench), 4 goals, 4 assists, 8 clean sheets and a 7.05 average rating. In three French cup appearances he has scored four times. Paris are top of FRA Division 1 under Janca, on 45 points and four clear of Marseille. Only Lorient have conceded fewer.

Why Paris are selling

Paris aren't short of defenders. Willian Pacho (94) is back from injury on 31 October, and Lucas Hernández (92), Achraf Hakimi (92) and Nuno Mendes (90) are all in the squad. The bigger factor is Beraldo's agent settings: they show him open to a transfer but not to a renewal. Two seasons is a long time, but if nothing changes, his value to Paris runs down every week they keep him.

His agent is protagonist, the same backer whose donations to Ajax and Athens Green this paper followed on Thursday. protagonist represents 655 players, 21 of them rated 90 or higher. Another of them, Roda's 90-rated Christos Tzolis, is also listed with no bids, at 150M.

protagonist also owns a big share of Beraldo's influence. On-chain records show only two holders: snailbrain with 57,000 and protagonist with 55,000. protagonist bought his 55,000 on 20 June 2025. A day later he proposed himself as agent, and the vote passed on his 55,000 alone.

Is 160M mad?

By current market standards, not really. It's just big. 160M is 4.2 times Beraldo's value. Ten players rated 90+ are listed right now, and only one has a lower price-to-value ratio: Alkmaar's Jan Kehrer, at 3.3 times. Kehrer is also the only one of the ten with a bid, 50M from Leverkusen. The other nine are waiting, including Liverpool's Virgil van Dijk at 130M and Stuttgart's 92-rated left-back, now down to 99.1M.

The real problem is what defenders have actually sold for. In July, Leipzig sold a 92-rated, 23-year-old centre-back on the same wages as Beraldo to Newcastle for 105.0M, about three times his current value. Piero Hincapié went from Leverkusen to London Red for 100M. Jules Koundé's 140M move to Bayern was the biggest defender fee of the summer. In the game's history, only one player who lists as a defender has sold for more than 160M: a 170M move from Dortmund to Leverkusen in July 2025.

If you price Beraldo the way Leipzig's centre-back was priced, you get about 117M.

Who could actually pay?

The list of possible buyers is short. Only 11 clubs have 160M or more in the bank. Wolverhampton lead them with 394.5M. Paris themselves have 18.95M, so the asking price is more than eight times their own balance.

Paris have two options: hold until a rich club decides they need a centre-back, or cut the price for a fourth time. Either way, the contract keeps running down.