Former West Ham United and Arsenal striker Lucas Perez has announced his return to football nearly a year after leaving Dutch champions PSV Eindhoven.
Now 37, the well-travelled centre-forward has not played a competitive match since turning out for PSV in a 3-0 away win at RKC Waalwijk just over 12 months ago.
Lucas Perez’s PSV stint was ruined by a bout of tuberculosis, limiting him to just 16 minutes of football in the Netherlands and seeing his time at the Philips Stadium come to a close in May 2025.
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Mateus Fernandes of West Ham United celebrates his goal with Crysencio Summerville of West Ham United during the Premier League match between West Ham United and Sunderland at the London Stadium in Stratford, England, on January 24, 2026.
The one-time West Ham United attacker then spent the entirety of the current campaign without a club, before re-joining old employers Cadiz on Thursday.
Ex-West Ham United striker Lucas Perez ends his exile with Spain return
The Spanish second-tier outfit have confirmed that Perez will represent the Estadio Nuevo Mirandilla outfit for the final two months of 2025/26. Sitting 18th in the Segunda, Cadiz are battling the drop alongside a number of other recent La Liga outfits, including Real Valladolid and Huesca.
Lucas Perez during West Ham United v Leicester City - Premier League
Photo by Rob Newell – CameraSport via Getty Images
Cadiz, for whom Perez scored six goals during his previous spell in Andalusia back in 2022, will be hoping the striker’s experience proves vital in their efforts to avoid relegation to the third division.
Speaking on the El After de Post United podcast, Lucas Perez confirmed that he chose West Ham over a number of established Spanish outfits when his forgettable spell with Arsenal ended in 2018.
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He would go on to score only three times in 15 Premier League matches for the Hammers, though, struggling to recapture the form which made him one of the hottest forwards in Spanish football in his Deportivo la Coruna heyday.
“[Manuel] Pellegrini was there, I remember,” Perez said. “I had options. I had options to come to Spain, with Real Sociedad. I also had offers from Sevilla and Real Betis but, well, I wanted to give myself a chance in England to see how I would do.
“Pellegrini called me. He was really keen.”
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Jarrod Bowen of West Ham United celebrates after scoring the opening goal of the match during the Emirates FA Cup Fifth Round match between West Ham United and Brentford on March 9, 2026 in London, England.
Perez found starts difficult to come by due to the competition posed by Marko Arnautovic and Javier ‘Chicharito’ Hernandez.
“After that, [Pellegrini] ended up only playing with Arnautovic up front and Chicharito and I coming off the bench. Or, sometimes Chicharito playing with Arnautovic.
“And that was my time at West Ham.”
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