The remarkable part of Ruben Dias’s extraordinary and pivotal contribution to Manchester City is the uncertainty he had to put aside last summer. He really did not seem so sure he wanted to leave his boyhood club, Benfica, in the first place.
The Portuguese like to say that players like him at a club’s core ‘carregar a bandeira’ (‘carry the flag’) and his work ethic was a big part of it. Defending had not initially seemed entirely effortless for him, so he would be into the Benfica Campus training ground at 7am some days.