Why Liverpool would not let 'magic' Carvalho go

For Fabio Carvalho, the clamour of January's Deadline Day, when Liverpool tried and failed to sign him from Fulham before the 11pm cut-off point, was nothing new. He is only 19 but the biggest clubs in the country have been vying for his signature for years.

Long before lighting up the Championship with Fulham, Carvalho was causing what Greg Cruttwell, founder and chairman of Balham FC, his first club in England, describes as a "circus" of interest on the 3G pitches and concrete courts of south London.

Manchester United flew representatives down from Manchester to meet him. Chelsea took him on a tour of their Cobham headquarters. There were meetings with Arsenal and, yes, Liverpool too. "Every club under the sun," Cruttwell tells Sky Sports with a chuckle.

Carvalho "could have gone anywhere", according to Cruttwell, but he and his family, who had moved to London from Lisbon only a few years earlier, turned down their more prestigious suitors in favour of a move to Fulham in 2015. It is fair to say the decision has paid off.

Having excelled in Fulham's academy, the attacking midfielder is now flourishing at senior level. This season, he has scored seven goals and provided four assists in 18 appearances, helping put Fulham on course for promotion and put himself on the path to stardom.

Carvalho now represents England at youth level but he barely even spoke a word of the language when he arrived in the country at the age of 10. For Cruttwell and Balham FC, it was not so much a case of them discovering Carvalho as Carvalho discovering them.

"He turned up at one of our U11 sessions on Clapham Common with his mum," recalls Cruttwell. "They had moved over to London and were looking for a club for him. They weren't living