Amid the persistent hype for Christiano Ronaldo, football fans could be forgiven for failing to notice that his compatriot, Luís Boa Morte, made 337 League appearances in England, all bar 51 of them in the Premiership, and played 28 times for Portugal. Those 51 games, almost half of them as a sub, was his contribution, while on loan from Southampton, to Fulham’s promotion, in 2001, from the second tier. His 18 goals in Fulham’s promotion season, mainly playing wide left, was quite a change from his previous tallies – none in 25 appearances for Arsenal and one in 14 for the Saints.

Having brought Luís from Arsenal in August 1999,

Dave Jones waited until the end of the year to give him a run of starts, beginning with a goal from a left-foot thunderbolt at Watford and continuing with a spirited performance in the Dell mud against Bradford City.

But just as it was looking that he might fit in, Glenn Hoddle arrived and Luís was side-lined, prior to his season-long loan to Fulham, at the end of which they signed him up for the Premiership. He was never to become a big scorer in the top tier – 27 in 156 appearances for Fulham, followed by two in 91 games for West Ham – but he played regularly for Fulham, where he was the fans’ Player-of-the-Season in 2005, and more often than not at West Ham – enough, surely, to raise questions as to Hoddle’s judgment.

In 2011, he went to Greece, rejoining Chris Coleman, manager for the majority of his time at Craven Cottage, but had hardly played when Larissa had financial problems and Luís was on his way. Now 34, he made a few appearances for Orlando Pirates and one for Toronto. He returned from his travels to have a trial with Portsmouth in September 2012 and then in an unlikely move signed on for Hampshire Premier League club, Four Marks whose manager, Leighton Jones, befriended Luís while he was security manager at Craven Cottage. He never played which raised suspicions the whole exercise was a publicity stunt.

Most recently he joined Marco Silva’s backroom staff at Everton in the summer of 2019, an appointment which raised eyebrows because of his one-time contretemps with another of Silva’s lieutenants, Duncan Ferguson, who he once accused of racially abusing him during the 2003-04 season when Fulham had met Everton in the FA Cup. He was not there long, however, leaving when Silva made way for Carlo Ancelotti.