The contract that Mariano Diaz signed with Real Madrid was for five years when he signed from Lyon back in 2018, but it appears to be stretching far longer than that. For the past four seasons, Mariano has been starved of game time but has shown little desire to leave.
According to Marca, he was close to a departure last summer and had agreed to a deal which guaranteed him the same €4.5m per annum salary for the following two years. However Valencia pulled out of the deal after then manager Jose Bordalas held a conversation with the forward about his plans for the coming season.
That was the closest he came to leaving, but Mariano has already made up his mind this summer. The 29-year-old wants to see out the final year of his contract, regardless of his playing time. No other club is willing to commit a similar amount of money to him and it looks unlikely that even a loan deal could change his mind.
Costing Los Blancos €21.5m, Mariano will be remembered as one of Florentino Perez’s mistakes at this point. In his four seasons, he is yet to reach the 2,000-minute mark in terms of game time and save for a singular goal against Barcelona in El Clasico in 2020, has left few memorable moments.
