Lucas Beraldo wears the number four shirt at Paris Saint-Germain, which in most squads would mark him out as a defensive cornerstone. At the Parc des Princes it makes him something more complicated: a 22-year-old Brazilian centre-back who has been at the club for two and a half years, who owns back-to-back Champions League winners’ medals, and who still has to fight for every minute he gets. So who is Lucas Beraldo, and where does he actually fit in Luis Enrique’s 2026/27 defence?
Who is Lucas Beraldo? The basics
Beraldo is a left-footed central defender, born in Brazil in November 2003, who joined Paris Saint-Germain from Sao Paulo in January 2024 in a deal reported at around 20 million euros. He was 20 years old at the time and had spent barely a season in Sao Paulo’s first team after coming through their academy — an unusually early move for a Brazilian defender, and one PSG made on projection rather than proof.
He is listed among Luis Enrique’s defenders in the club’s 2026/27 first-team squad, alongside Marquinhos, Willian Pacho, Illia Zabarnyi and Lucas Hernandez in the central positions. The number four is his; you can find him on Paris Saint-Germain’s official squad list.
The left foot is the point
Every elite defence wants a left-footed centre-back, and the reason is entirely practical. A back four with two right-footers is a back four that has to turn its body to play out to the left, which costs a beat, invites a press and shortens the passing angles available to the full-back ahead. Luis Enrique’s Paris are built on playing through pressure rather than around it, and that makes footedness a structural question, not a stylistic preference.
Beraldo’s profile is the modern one: comfortable stepping into midfield with the ball, quick enough to defend a high line, and happier facing the game than scrambling backwards into it. What he has been asked to do since arriving is learn to do all of that at a tempo the Brasileirao never demanded of him, against opponents who punish the one bad decision rather than the tenth.
Where he sits in the pecking order
Honestly, behind a lot of people. Marquinhos remains the captain and the reference point of the whole back line. Pacho has become the first-choice partner. Zabarnyi arrived wearing the number six and expecting to play. Lucas Hernandez can cover the left of a central pairing, and both Nuno Mendes and Lucas Digne offer left-sided options further forward. Our guide to the PSG centre-backs lays out the full hierarchy.
That is the reality of being a young defender at a club that has won the European Cup twice in a row. Rotation exists, but it is earned, and Luis Enrique has been consistent in one thing above all: nobody plays on reputation, or on transfer fee, or on shirt number. Beraldo’s route to minutes runs through cup nights, congested weeks and the moments when one of the senior three is unavailable.
What he has already won
The medal collection is the strange part of the Beraldo story. He has been a Paris Saint-Germain player through the most successful period in the club’s history: three Ligue 1 titles, the 2024/25 Champions League and the 2025/26 defence of it, which made PSG only the second club in the Champions League era to retain the trophy. Add the 2026 UEFA Super Cup, won 2-1 against Aston Villa in August.
He is 22 and already part of a squad that is one of nine in history to have retained the European Cup. Very few defenders his age can say that, and it is worth remembering when the conversation turns to whether he has played enough. Being in the room while a team learns how to win like that is not nothing.
What comes next for Lucas Beraldo
The 2026/27 season has started badly for Paris in the league — winless after three games, seven points behind Monaco — and comfortably in Europe, where the Champions League defence opened with a 6-1 win over Slovan Bratislava at the Parc des Princes. A stuttering domestic campaign usually means changes somewhere, and a squad player’s opportunity tends to arrive out of someone else’s difficulty.
Beraldo’s contract situation is not in dispute and his role is not in crisis; he is simply at the stage of a career where the next 12 months decide whether he becomes a Marquinhos successor or a well-compensated fourth choice. He has the foot, the age and the education. What he needs is the run of games, and at this club that has never been given away.
For everything else on the defensive unit, our centre-backs explainer breaks down how Luis Enrique is rotating the back line this season.
