4) Ricardo Carvalho (Porto to Chelsea – £20m)

Carvalho

The defender had won the Champions League with Porto and he was undoubtedly the most successful signing out of the players Mourinho bought from Portugal in 2004.

Carvalho struck up a formidable centre-back partnership with John Terry, helping to build a solid foundation which was the basis of Chelsea’s first two Premier League titles in the mid-00s.


David Tully

David Tully

David has worked as a football reporter for the last fifteen years. Having started as an intern at Snack Media, he then went on to become a freelancer, working on various different sites. At the start of 2023, he took up his current role as content writer for National World's Football News Network.