Reports in Portugal are saying that Jose Fonte has four offers on the table, three from Portugal and one from England and the speculation is that it is Saints who are the club who have offered a deal.
Sportwitness are reporting that Portuguese newspaper O Jogo are claiming that Jose Fonte is assessing his options and one of them could well be a return to his former club Southampton.
Fonte who spent 7 years at St Mary's before departing under a cloud for West Ham United in January 2017, is firstly deciding whether he will play for one more year, a season that would see him hit his 41sr birthday.
They state that the club urging him to continue playing is Estoril, a short trip down the coast from Lisbon, whereas the other 3 offers are more unclear, whether they are a playing role, coaching or a hybrid of both.
O Jogo point out that with Southampton back in the Premier League, they ‘might want to offer some kind of role’ to ‘one of their recent legends’. It’s just not clarified whether that would be now or after a last season with him in the squad.
It is interesting to note that on Saints social media sites, despite leaving St Mary's under a cloud after suddenly deciding that he wanted a move to a bigger club in the summer of 2016, only 7 months after signing a long term deal and eventually forcing a move to West Ham, Fonte seems to be held in higher regard than Adam Lallana, another Saints legend who moved on with equal indecent haste,
I would be very surprised if this was a playing contract on the table, at 40 that would be a big gamble in the Premier League, last season at Braga, Fonte was very much a bit part player, starting just 16 games plus another 3 as sub, in the final third of the season he was mostly an unused sub on the bench.
However in 2022/23 he was still a regular starter at Lille.
The big question of what offer Southampton would make is open to debate, but I would suspect it would be a coaching role of some sort and it would be interesting if to see if he could still do a job off the bench.