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Euro 2020: Portugal and Pep Guardiola both thanking Benfica's talent factory for Ruben Dias, Bernardo Silva and co... with club's sales totalling nearly £800m in past seven years

They had a problem at Benfica. A nice problem, but it needed correcting. Ruben Dias talked too much. Too involved. Too desperate to demand the best from those around him.

Dias was 18 and fresh into Benfica’s B team. He had shown leadership skills since joining the academy a decade earlier but needed fine-tuning. He was trying to be an all-encompassing leader of men before he had become a man himself.

‘We had some challenges,’ grins Benfica B coach Nelson Verissimo. ‘Ruben wanted to communicate with the whole team from full backs to strikers. We explained that he shouldn’t wear himself out too much.