João Félix did not have to do anything special to make people believe. There was no light-bulb moment that convinced his coaches at Benfica that he was destined for greatness, no single heroic performance that marked him for superstardom. Even as a teenager — braces clamped to his teeth, hair swept forward over his eyes, shoulders slight — Félix was a love-at-first-sight sort of player.

There was nothing brash about his talent. “He is not a dribbling guy,” said Nuno Gomes, who was working at Seixal, Benfica’s academy just outside Lisbon, when Félix arrived as a 15-year-old. But there did not need to be. His brilliance shone in the little things, the simple things.

Gomes fell for his vision, his perception and, in particular, his first touch: the way he seemed to know what he was going to do before he received the ball. “He thinks faster than the others,” he said.