On December 10, 2014, William Carvalho played for Sporting Lisbon in a Champions League game against Chelsea.
The match took place at Stamford Bridge. It was the first time Carvalho had ever played in England. For football fans who may otherwise have had little stake in the evening’s action, it was a chance to put a face to a name.
Ah, Senhor Carvalho. Welcome. We’ve been expecting you.
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It turned out to be a deeply unremarkable game. Chelsea won 3-1, Carvalho was taken off after an hour. It sticks in the mind only as a kind of phantom memory — a chapter in a story that was never actually told.
Yes, I know you’ve tried your level best to forget, but we’re going back there. To Carvalho fever. To peak Carvalho. To those heady, woozy days of the Carvalho Transfer Industrial Complex, when strangers would assail you in the street to tell you that the nation’s new favourite Portuguese defensive midfielder was just about to sign for Arsenal. Or Manchester United. Or the local school team, because Mrs Davies was literally in Lisbon at that very moment putting the finishing touches on a four-year deal.
This isn’t even much of an exaggeration.
Between roughly 2013 and 2017, Carvalho was rarely out of the transfer gossip columns in the English press. I was working for the website of a national newspaper during those years and only Nicolas Gaitan — a mythical figure I’m increasingly convinced never actually existed — could hold a candle to his ubiquity. I can still type the words “Arsenal target William Carvalho” with my eyes closed.
What all this says about the lunatic tendencies of the sports media is a topic for another time. There was, though, an air of inevitability about Carvalho’s arrival in the Premier League. That game against Chelsea appeared to be just the prologue.
But then… nothing.
Carvalho stayed at Sporting, then stayed a little longer, and a little longer still. When he eventually did leave, in 2018, it wasn’t for London, Liverpool or Manchester. He joined Real Betis and has been there ever since. This evening, at Old Trafford, he will make only his second club appearance on English soil, more than eight years after the first.
All of which raises a tangle of interrelated questions. Was the interest from Premier League teams ever serious? If it was, why did a move never materialise? Was Carvalho as talented as people believed? And is the nagging feeling about his career thus far — that he should have played for a top Champions League club, should have won more trophies, should have stretched himself — actually fair, or just the result of muddled thinking and good, old-fashioned Premier League parochialism?
Carvalho first came to prominence in the 2013-14 season. He was only 21 but had spent the previous year and a half playing first-team football on loan in Belgium. When he returned to Sporting, he looked ready.
“He made the best possible impression that summer,” says Jefferson, Sporting’s left-back at the time. “From the first moment, you could see he had a lot of ability. He protected the ball well and there was real quality to his passing.”
Leonardo Jardim, the Sporting coach, was similarly impressed. Carvalho, who idolised Patrick Vieira and Yaya Toure, looked like a bruiser, but it was his refined touch and unflappable nature that really caught the eye.
“He brought real quality to the midfield, which spread confidence to the defence behind him,” says Jefferson. “We knew we could pass to him without fear, knowing that he would not lose the ball. He was always demanding possession, always passing forward, trying to get us playing. He added a lot to the team.”
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By October 2013, Sporting president Bruno de Carvalho was talking about the youngster as a future mainstay of the national team. He made his debut for Portugal a month later and, at the end of a season of huge promise, was named in Paulo Bento’s squad for the World Cup in Brazil.
The rumour mill cranked into gear. There were links to Juventus, Chelsea and Manchester United (sample headline: “United close on £35million Portuguese ace”). Mainly, though, there was Arsenal, who needed a reliable defensive midfielder with almost medical urgency. The fact Carvalho had always been fond of the club — he likes wearing the No 14 jersey because it is Thierry Henry’s old number — was a bonus.
Weeks of speculation finally came to nought. Portuguese newspaper A Bola reported at the time that Arsenal did make a deadline-day offer (cash plus Costa Rica striker Joel Campbell) for Carvalho, but that version of events is rejected by Andre Geraldes, who was sporting director at the Portuguese club between 2013 and 2018.
“Arsenal did not end up making a concrete bid,” Geraldes tells The Athletic. “It didn’t go beyond an approach, there was no official offer. But yes, there was a lot of talk about it.”
It didn’t stop that summer. ‘Carvalhomania’ revived in each of the following transfer windows, lurching forward with its own zombie momentum. His performances for club and country — he was named player of the tournament at the Under-21s European Championship in 2015, then played a key role as Portugal won Euro 2016 — only added fuel to the fire.
“We used to talk about it,” laughs Jefferson. “We’d see the rumours in the Lisbon newspapers. We were really close and I was always joking around with him: ‘Ahh, man, don’t forget who your friends are when you make it big! When you get the move, tell your new coach to sign me as well!’
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“I definitely thought he would join a really big club. He had ability on the ball, understood positioning, was good in and out of possession. As long as he maintained his focus and form, I was convinced he would go on to play for a club even bigger than Sporting — that he’d take that next step in his career.”
That he stayed in Portugal for so long looks puzzling, then.
Carvalho was valued by his coaches — Jardim, Jorge Jesus and Fernando Santos don’t have a huge amount in common beyond their nationality, but they all loved him to pieces — and had plenty of suitors abroad. So why did none of them sign him?
In part, Carvalho’s career was shaped by Sporting’s understandable determination not to be pushed around.
“We did receive some offers,” says Geraldes. “At the time, the Chinese market was booming and we received one unbelievable offer for William. But neither the president nor the coach wanted to let him go.
“Then there was West Ham, Sevilla. Leicester also asked. Aston Villa… William had a lot of admirers in England, but no club matched the price we were asking for. We were also fighting for titles and William was a fundamental player in our strategy. We weren’t going to let him go for just any fee.”
Carvalho’s buyout clause was €45million (£40.1m; $47.5m). That, says Geraldes, made him too expensive for even the top Spanish and Italian teams. In the end, it must have made him too expensive for the Premier League, too. The logical conclusion is that the top clubs liked him, but did not like him that much. The market, as they say, does not lie.
It is to Carvalho’s credit that he swallowed any disappointment he felt during those years. “William was a great professional throughout,” says Geraldes. “He always gave everything on the pitch.”
Jefferson echoes that view: “Of course he felt sad sometimes. Every player wants to try new things, to play in a more competitive league. But those moments passed and he continued playing his football, moving forward.”
Carvalho may still be at Sporting today if circumstances had not forced his hand.
In May 2018, the whole club was thrown into disarray when a group of masked ‘supporters’ broke into the training ground, attacking players and staff. Carvalho was one of a handful of players who wanted to rescind his contract. Eventually, he agreed to move to Betis, who paid an initial €16million for 75 per cent of his rights.
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His first two seasons were, by his own admission, slightly underwhelming. But Manuel Pellegrini’s arrival as coach in the summer of 2020 proved to be a turning point. Betis are enjoying a golden spell — they won the Copa del Rey last season and are on course for a third successive top-six finish in La Liga — and Carvalho has been a pillar of the side.
He has never been the most explosive player — perhaps a factor that counted against him in the eyes of Premier League scouts — and, yes, he does move a bit like a runaway wardrobe. But he makes up for it by being smooth as hell. Watching Carvalho on a good day is like taking a bath in yoghurt. That isn’t something you can say of many defensive midfielders, but Carvalho is just… luxurious.
“I always try to simplify, to turn difficult things into easy ones,” he once said. “I’m like a compass. I say, ‘Now the team goes right or left.'”
He is also capable of moments of sublime beauty: witness his balletic finish in the league thrashing of Osasuna last year, or the moment he took Alejandro Catena for a guided tour of Nutmeg City in the Copa del Rey win over Rayo Vallecano (below).
In a recent interview with A Bola, Carvalho said he is still improving as a player and his form over the last year suggests he may be on to something.
Here is another Carvalho quote from that A Bola interview: “If you do things well, with effort and dignity, then sooner or later you will get what you want.”
Which brings us back to those lingering questions of fulfilment and potential. On the one hand, we should be wary of being sniffy about a CV just because it doesn’t include a spell at one of the very top clubs. Carvalho has 80 caps for his country, has never had to endure long spells on the bench, and has spent the last decade living in Lisbon and Seville. We are hardly in Diaries of a Tough Life territory here.
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On the other, the siren song continues to sound. He has been linked with moves to Leicester, Wolves and Nottingham Forest in recent summers. It’s a long shot, but maybe, just maybe, there’s Premier League life in Arsenal target William Carvalho yet.
“He can still reach the next level,” says Jefferson. “There is time: he’s only 30. There’s a big move waiting for him yet.”
Geraldes is even more emphatic. “If I became sporting director at Real Madrid tomorrow, I would sign him,” he says. “On his day, there aren’t many in the world who can match him.”
(Top photo: Joaquin Corchero/Europa Press via Getty Images)
