It is one of those transfer stories that only football could produce: the centre-back who spent last August knocking Red Star Belgrade out of the Champions League is now, by all accounts, on the verge of signing for them.
Derrick Lukassen, the 31-year-old Ghana international, has been a free agent since his contract at Cypriot champions Pafos expired on July 1. According to Serbian outlets hotsport.rs and tportal.hr, picked up by ONE, Red Star have reached an agreement with him on a three-year deal with no transfer fee involved.
Lukassen's history with Red Star runs deeper than a passing rumour would suggest. Last August, still wearing Pafos colours, he was part of the side that eliminated the Serbian champions 3-2 on aggregate in the Champions League play-off round — a result that sent Pafos into their first-ever league-phase campaign and dropped Red Star down into the Europa League.
It was not his only scalp that summer. In the second qualifying round, Pafos had already knocked out Maccabi Tel Aviv, Lukassen's own former club, winning 2-1 on aggregate before going on to eliminate Dynamo Kyiv and then Red Star themselves.
Born in Amsterdam and a product of the AZ Alkmaar academy, Lukassen moved to PSV Eindhoven in a reported €5 million deal in 2017 before spells at Hertha Berlin, Anderlecht and two Turkish clubs, Kasımpaşa and Fatih Karagümrük. He joined Maccabi Tel Aviv before his switch to Pafos, where he became a key figure in the Cypriot club's historic European run.
Qualifying for Ghana through ancestry, Lukassen earned his senior international debut and went on to start at this summer's World Cup, scoring against Croatia in the group stage and featuring against Colombia and England as the Black Stars made their mark in the United States.
That Dutch passport carries a practical benefit for Red Star, too: as an EU national, Lukassen would not occupy one of the club's limited foreign-player slots in the Serbian Superliga, making him an unusually low-risk addition for a team also plotting a fresh European qualifying campaign.
Should the move go through, Lukassen would link up with Muhammad Abu Fani, the Israel international midfielder who signed a three-year contract at Red Star in June after moving from Ferencváros. Red Star's Israeli contingent has shifted this summer in the other direction too — goalkeeper Omri Glazer, who spent three seasons in Belgrade, has agreed to return to Maccabi Haifa.
The Israeli interest in this story does not end there. Red Star's Champions League qualifying draw has them lined up to face Northern Ireland's Larne in the second round, with the winner set to meet Hapoel Beer Sheva in the third qualifying round — provided the Israeli champions first get past Iceland's Vikingur Reykjavik in ties being played this week.
Should both Red Star and Hapoel Beer Sheva advance, and should Lukassen's transfer be finalised in time to be registered, the same player who eliminated Maccabi Tel Aviv from Europe less than a year ago could find himself lining up against another Israeli champion in the very next Champions League campaign.
Nothing has yet been confirmed by Red Star Belgrade or by Lukassen himself — the report so far rests on Serbian outlets, relayed by ONE — but the outline of the deal, a straightforward free transfer on a three-year contract, is being described in Belgrade as close to done.
