Wolves have seen several Portuguese players flourish at Molineux in the modern era, and one of them modelled his game off Cristiano Ronaldo.
In the period when Nuno Espirito Santo was manager, he was able to attract a raft of Portuguese talent to the club with the help of Jorge Mendes.
Wolves supporters were blessed by the class of Joao Moutinho, Diogo Jota, Ruben Neves and many others who helped the Old Gold on their way to consecutive Europa League campaigns.
Each of the above stars have since moved on from Molineux, but the legacy they created in Wolverhampton has seen other Portuguese stars join.
Youngster Rodrigo Gomes was signed from Benfica in the summer, while their current best player from the nation is arguably centre-back Toti Gomes, who played an entirely different position growing up.
Photo by Jack Thomas - WWFC/Wolves via Getty Images
Photo by Jack Thomas – WWFC/Wolves via Getty Images
Toti Gomes used to be a striker growing up
Toti has truly come into his own since Vitor Pereira was appointed manager in December, as the 26-year-old is now one of the first names on the team sheet.
The Portuguese international is excellent as a left centre-back which allows him to showcase his ball-carrying attributes and solid distribution.
Interestingly, during the early stages of his career, the Wolves man didn’t start as a defender and was instead played as a winger and striker who modelled his game off the great Cristiano Ronaldo.
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“I always watched football, I always wanted to play, my idols were Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi,” Toti said via Wolves official in 2022.
“When I start playing football, I was not a defender, I was a winger and a striker. But with the passing of the years, I came down and found my true position.”
The change from an attacker to a defender has been instrumental in his rise towards Premier League stardom. But it wasn’t just his position that was altered as he played a completely different sport before pursuing football professionally.
Physically, Toti is imposing, and he uses that to his advantage to win duels. Unsurpisingly, he comes from a background of playing rugby as a youngster and didn’t play a game of football till he was 16 years old.
“I played regularly for six years,” Toti told The Athletic in 2022. “There was a place that we used to go after school to study and then after studies they put on some activities like tennis and football.
“But the rugby was more serious. Eventually, they created a team, so I started to really enjoy it.”
Despite his love for rugby, football was always at the back of his mind, and he couldn’t recall a time when he did not enjoy kicking a football after moving to Portugal from Guinea-Bissau at the age of three.
“I always enjoyed football when I was a kid but I didn’t have the opportunity like some other kids to go to a football academy when I was younger,” he explained. “So I started with other sports, like athletics, and I played rugby until a certain age and I only started playing football when I was nearly 16.
“When we moved house we had a football team five or 10 minutes away and I asked my father if it would be possible to put me there to start training. That’s where everything started.”
Considering he didn’t start playing football properly till his teenage years, Toti’s rise has been impressive, and he should be an inspiration to other youngsters.