Portuguese Primeira Liga Stars Who Could Feature in Premier League's Title Race

After a season in which their patience was frequently tested, supporters in both the red and blue halves of Manchester had been looking for some early reassurance as the summer transfer window of 2017 came into view.

We won't jump the gun by talking about strength and stability, but Manchester United and Manchester City can at least tentatively congratulate themselves on their respective mastery of patience and prudence as they welcome a potentially crucial new signing each.

Neither goalkeeper Ederson nor Victor Lindelof, the Swedish centre-back who played in front of him as Benfica wrapped up a fourth straight Primeira Liga title this spring, are new names to English Premier League-focussed gossip columns.

Their impending arrivals in the north-west are not in the least surprising, with Ederson linked with City for the best part of a year and Lindelof with United for longer. Seeing a cluster of scouts from English clubs at Liga fixtures is not especially notable—though easy to keep track of, with Portuguese clubs habitually circulating a list of the clubs with scouts present at a game around their press boxes.

Yet Ederson and Lindelof's arrivals—the latter of which has yet to be confirmed—are, in each case, the culmination of a long and ardent courtship. City's signing was the first of the two and, some would argue, the more desperately needed after Claudio Bravo's well-documented struggles between the sticks over the past season.

At a cool €40 million transfer fee (£35 million), the second most expensive goalkeeper ever behind Gianluigi Buffon, there will be pressure on Ederson's shoulders, but the 23-year-old has proved himself to be sanguine at every significant moment in his Benfica career so far. This is a man who made his debut for the champions in some of the most intense circumstances possible.

On March 5, 2016, Benfica made the short trip to Sporting CP, now coached by their iconic former boss Jorge Jesus, trailing their Lisbon rivals by a point at the top. The experienced Julio Cesar, who was excellent since his arrival in Portugal, pulled out of the lineup late on with a muscle injury, meaning Ederson was in for the first time for the club's biggest match of the season.

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He played it as if he were a veteran. Benfica won 1-0 and closed out the Liga by winning all nine of their remaining fixtures after that visit to Alvalade. He was impossible to shift for Cesar from that point. Lindelof, who arrived for his Manchester United medical on Wednesday, was also part of the back line that day. He had been a regular in the XI for almost two months by then, but he had also taken an unusual path to becoming a regular.

The now-22-year-old had rather hoped his chance would come earlier, at the start of 2015-16. Having been a key player for the Sweden side that won the European Under-21 Championship in the summer of 2015 as a right-back, Maxi Pereira's move to bitter foes Porto should have opened a place in the first team for him, but it didn't.  

As The Gazette's Anthony Vickers recalled last May, a frustrated Lindelof had been on the brink of a loan to Championship side Middlesbrough by January (with a €3 million purchase option mooted) when an injury crisis struck at Estadio da Luz.

Lindelof was drafted into the senior Benfica side as an emergency centre-back, flourished, and never looked back. His rise was so stratospheric that his first club, Vasteras, and Benfica ended up squabbling over a potential sell-on jackpot. It was sorted out earlier this year, with the Swedish side standing to bank in excess of €4 million, per Mais Futebol (article in Portuguese).

So, by all means, approach both of these signings with caution, and be aware of the need to adapt to a different (and higher standard of) competition. Yet both players are quick on their feet and proved to be able to adapt in difficult circumstances. They fill positions of obvious shortcoming in their new teams—who both need good starts to the season to establish genuine title credentials—and will make the best of any situation.

Had fate unfolded a little differently, we could be saying the same about Bernardo Silva, himself a Benfica academy graduate, though one who flew the nest before making an imprint on the first team.

Silva's mature form took shape, unlike many high-grade Portuguese products, almost totally abroad, with two years of sterling work at AS Monaco paving his way to the Premier League, also with City. There, he will dovetail with (and presumably eventually replace) his namesake David, and like the Spaniard, Bernardo already has the ability to cope with insistent physical attention, courtesy of his time in Ligue 1.

There could still be more to come. Gelson Martins, who shone for Sporting last season, has been linked to Liverpool with some insistence, including by BBC Sport. It's not difficult to understand why the Reds would be interested in Martins as a potential alternative to Mohamed Salah, albeit a subtly different one—a pacy player who prefers to go on the outside to attack.

The 22-year-old has an imposing buyout clause of around €60 million, but potentially high transfer fees are less and less of a deterrent for England's great and good these days.

He has had the ultimate calling card since last September, when he produced a dazzling performance in Sporting's narrow defeat to Real Madrid at the Santiago Bernabeu. There is also the knowledge that others from Sporting's prolific winger factory, notably Cristiano Ronaldo (as was) and Nani have made an impact in the same region.

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Martins' Sporting team-mate William Carvalho is another player often brought up as someone who could move to England—and has improved exponentially in terms of passing and composure since he was initially put forward as a candidate to star in the Premier League—though the Premier League's leading lights seem to be looking elsewhere for defensive midfield reinforcement.

The elephant in the room in this discussion is the absence, to this point, of Porto. The northern giants still have this reputation as the ultimate transfer market hustlers, an image augmented by the image of Joao Moutinho sitting in reception kicking his heels at Spurs Lodge on deadline day in 2012, waiting on a reunion with Andre Villas-Boas that never happened as his club tried to squeeze an extra few euros out of the deal.

This is no longer the case. After four trophyless years and some poor strategic decisions, Porto budgeted to raise almost €116 million from player sales at the start of the window, per Mais Futebol (in Portuguese), to balance their books.

They have already raised €38 million this week by selling centre-forward Andre Silva to AC Milan—a player a few Premier League sides likely had an eye on before being beaten to the punch—but are in no position to drive the hard bargains of yesteryear. Apart from midfield sentinel Danilo, it is also debatable whether any of their current crop would make it to a Premier League contender.

It is Benfica who are now Portugal's transfer-market kings, and the Premier League's role in that has been clear ever since David Luiz and Ramires made their way from Lisbon to London in 2010.

They have renewed that relationship this summer, and it might grow further if interest in former Barcelona B left-back Alejandro Grimaldo reaches a crescendo. Expect some ex-Aguias to have a big influence at the top end of the Premier League in 2017-18.