The Portugal assistant manager won the Premier League with Damien Duff under Jose Mourinho at Chelsea.
12:02, 07 Dec 2025
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Chelsea's Ricardo Carvalho and Damien Duff in training(Image: Darren Walsh/Chelsea FC Via Getty Images)
No matter how slowly Damien Duff spoke to him, as they sat next to each other in the dressing room, Ricardo Carvalho still couldn’t understand what his new Chelsea teammate was saying.
But on the pitch, during a glorious Premier League winning campaign together, nothing got lost in translation.
During Carvalho’s early days in English football, following his move from Porto to Stamford Bridge, the Portuguese defender struck up a friendship with his new Irish teammate.
“What I remember was sitting beside him and how that was important, because I started to listen more to English,” he told MirrorSport.
“I remember he used to joke, he had an old Jaguar and I was like, what’s that?
“But it was only for one year, unfortunately, and he went to Newcastle after that.”
These days Carvalho is Portugal’s assistant manager, while Duff is taking some time out after a hugely successful first spell in senior management with League of Ireland side Shelbourne.
The former Porto, Chelsea and Real Madrid defender sat down with the Star in Portugal’s team hotel on the morning of last month’s World Cup qualifier against Ireland at the Aviva Stadium.
Later that evening, he was pictured leading Cristiano Ronaldo away from the Irish bench, after his red card in a 2-0 defeat to the Boys in Green.
Portugal would seal World Cup qualification a few days later thanks to a 9-1 hammering of Armenia.
But before that famous night for Irish football in Dublin, he gave his thoughts on Duff, his own time at Chelsea, Portugal’s Euro 2016 success and his admiration for Ireland’s defenders.
As for his year with the Ballyboden flyer, he said: “I have very good memories. In fact, when I arrived at Chelsea, Damien Duff in the dressing room was sitting next to me.
“I had no English, and it was so difficult to understand him. Unfortunately in that time, even if he spoke too slowly I didn’t understand him.
“There was another Portuguese player who was my friend, Tiago Mendes, who was there, and he helped me.
“Damien was a great player. It was a very good surprise for me to see this.
“In that time, up front you had [Didier] Drogba, who just arrived at the same time, Damien Duff on one side and Arjen Robben on the other side.
“Damien in that time was a key player for us, because he was working so hard up front and going back helping the team defending.
“Unfortunately, afterwards he went to Newcastle. But it was a great year with him. As a team we grew up a lot.
“In that time it was great to see that team together and Damien Duff was part of this very good team.”
It was quite the attacking line up. Duff had arrived in the summer of 2003 from Blackburn, while Drogba and Robben came in a year later, at the start of Jose Mourinho’s first season in charge.
“Sometimes you have teams that need to play well to get results,” said Carvalho. “In that time at Chelsea, what I feel now when I think about it, is that team sometimes didn’t need to play so well to get results, because it was difficult to play against us.
“That was down to teamwork. Damien Duff was a winger but he was also defending, helping the team.
“Of course you also had Robben on the other side who was so quick that it was difficult to defend him. And then Didier Drogba was a great player up front.”
Carvalho won three Portuguese titles and a Champions League with Porto, three Premier Leagues at Chelsea and a Primeira Liga with Real Madrid, among other top-class honours.
But the one that really sticks out is Portugal’s Euro 2016 success over hosts France. That success came 12 years after Euros heartache on home soil.
“It is different to win for a club and to win for your country,” he said. “To win for your country, the feeling is bigger.
“I played in 2004 and we lost the Euros, and it was hard to accept. I spent 12 years to arrive at another final.
“I was getting some trophies for my clubs, but I was feeling that I was missing something for my country.
“There were a lot of players that were so good but that didn’t get trophies for Portugal - Figo, Rui Costa, Deco. So I am so pleased to have a trophy for my country.
“If I finished my career and I didn’t get this trophy, I would have felt that I was missing something, so when we won in 2016 against France it was special. It was special for me and for all Portuguese people.”
Perhaps his answer to the next question might have been different had it been asked 24 hours later.
But, speaking on the morning of Portugal’s shock defeat in Dublin, and with memories of their injury-time win in Lisbon still fresh in the mind, Carvalho was full of praise of the Irish defence.
As a former centre-half himself - and as someone who works a lot on the defensive side of Portugal’s plan - he loves it when a good tackle or block is greeted with a fist pump or similar expression of satisfaction.
“Ireland, as you saw in Lisbon, defended so well and after they were waiting for space behind,” he said.
“Of course I love to see the defenders that like to defend. This is the first principle. When you see players that love to defend, and who celebrate tackles, I love that.
“For me, when you see players who like to defend, and who celebrate when they take the ball like they have scored a goal, I love it.
“Sometimes you have to defend and to suffer, and to make it uncomfortable for the other team to create chances. This is also part of football.
“It’s not just playing well with the ball. Yes, that is nice. But for a defender, when the opposition team doesn’t create too many chances, they have to feel good about that.”
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Portugal has long been a destination for Irish sporting teams and athletes as a warm-weather training base.
But they have taken things up several notches with their High-Performance Sports Centre in Anadia, which has welcomed athletes from over 40 countries, including Australia, China, Argentina, the USA and Qatar.
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One of the facilities at Portugal's High Performance Sports Centre in Anadia
This facility caters for sports such as Cycling, Gymnastics, Judo and Fencing, while separately the City of Football, which opened in March 2016, provides top-class training facilities for Portugal’s national teams.
The development of these bases have led to sporting success across many different codes, including handball, rugby, futsal, athletics, surf, gymnastics, tennis, canoeing and cycling.
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Athletes - both local and foreign - are given access to specialised coaching, medical and physiotherapy support, recovery technologies, nutrition planning, strength and conditioning, and controlled training environments.
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