I’ve been following Nélson Semedo’s career for a number of years now. Everytime I pick up an Xbox controller and slot in that year’s copy of EA Sports‘ FIFA franchise, I make it a priority to blow my transfer budget on that pesky Portuguese from Benfica.

I give Bartomeu and his goons a lot of slack for their transfer policy (shipping out below-par signings for next to nothing while outlaying millions on new players and then using that as an excuse to slap Qatar Airways and now Rakuten on those silky blaugrana stripes was never my cup of tea). But I think they’ve hit a golden goose with this one.

Standing like a gigantic midget at 180cm, Nélson Semedo is an offensive fullback with superb physical attributes. He’ll be the ninth Portuguese to defend the Barça shirt. Obviously I have my natural qualms with Portuguese footballers – that’ll probably exist until the day our nemesis Cristiano retires. But this kid is something special.

Check out these highlights if you don’t believe me:

They say we opened our wallet to the tune of €30m which isn’t all that bad, considering we picked up that beautiful Brazilian (yes, that’s Dani Alves’ birth name) for €36m in 2008. I haven’t been excited by all that much in Catalonia lately. Changes at the top of the hierarchy have had me perched on a toilet with an upset stomach. But this move goes along way in restoring that confidence for all culés worldwide.

Now I just salivate at thought of the link-up play he’ll generate with Messi across that right wing!