Why Poland Clash Can Finally See Portugal's William Carvalho Hit the Big Time

There are some players who are just drawn to the transfer rumour mill, seemingly locked in a loving embrace with it as they go around and around without ever actually making the moves that many have said are inevitable.

Of course, football transfers are often a lot more complicated than many seem to think they are. This isn’t like Football Manager, where all it takes is a click of a mouse to get your man, but that said, it is surprising that certain players don’t move when it seems they are about to.

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Take Portugal’s William Carvalho, a rumour-mill veteran and stalwart of the clickbait rumour websites who, according to plenty of those and also more reputable sources, should really be lining up in the Premier League by now.

Fans of Arsenal, thanks to Portuguese outlet A Bola in October (h/t the Daily Mail's Richard Arrowsmith), Manchester United, following a report from Tuttomercatoweb in March (h/t Charlie Phillippe in the Daily Express), and Liverpool, after a piece from Metro's Jamie McLaughlin in 2014, have all read that Carvalho was supposedly on his way to their club in the not-too-distant past.

However, the 24-year-old defensive midfielder—a key player in Portugal’s Euro 2016 quarter-final with Poland this week—still finds himself based in his nation’s capital with Sporting, where he’s played for the first team since 2011.

And is that not just a little bit strange?

Sporting have grown used to their top talents leaving them at a much more tender age over the years, with the headline acts such as Cristiano Ronaldo (18) and Nani (20) jumping ship for brighter pastures at the first opportunity they got.

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The tough-tackling Carvalho is a different player to those two, of course, but given how long he has been trapped inside that rumour mill, it's more than a little surprising to still see him in the green-and-white of Sporting, where he was named Player of the Year in 2015.

Could that be about to change, though?

Thursday night’s meeting with Poland in Marseille, France, isn’t about club futures, obviously. Whoever wins this most fascinating of quarter-finals will then face up to Wales or Belgium in the semis, one step away from the tournament's final.

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This really isn’t a time to talk about transfers, and it would be foolish to think that Carvalho will be doing anything other than focusing on winning the game for his country come Thursday evening, but given how the match could pan out, he might find himself as the subject of plenty of interest come full-time.

As shown in their win over Switzerland, Poland like to play on the front foot and expose the gaps between defence and midfield—gaps that existed because Granit Xhaka, the man Arsenal signed instead of Carvalho, didn’t have his greatest game.

Blocking both the passes and the runs into that area will be Carvalho’s job in Marseille, and after a fine performance in the masterclass of defensive football that was the goalless 90 minutes against Croatia, he’ll be looking to build upon that in the quarter-final.

Initially left out of the Portugal side that took on Iceland in their opening group match of the tournament, Carvalho has been ever-present for coach Fernando Santos since.

He might not be the most eye-catching of midfielders, but he is quick and strong and uses the ball well, shuffling it off to the side as his team-mates again look for the latest ball up to Ronaldo or the chance to play through their captain.

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There's no doubt that he's been watched extensively by scouts over the years as he’s been linked with big-money moves, so perhaps the doubts over Carvalho centre on his temperament. He is the vice-captain of Sporting and so obviously has leadership skills, but he has sometimes shown a worrying tendency to let games pass him by.

For a player of his profile and given the transfer fee he is likely to command, clubs may be reluctant to take a chance on him if this is a trait that could negatively impact his game in the future.

If he needs a big performance to reassure people that he is worth the time, the effort and the expense that it would take to bring him to their club, then this would be as good a point as any to provide it.

If he can stamp his authority on this game and drag Portugal into the semi-finals, then there’s surely not much that he can’t do.