The Portuguese forward joined Chelsea on loan from Atletico Madrid at the start of the January transfer window and netted his first goal for the club on our Premier League visit to West Ham United.

Blues supporters had their first glimpse of Joao Felix when he featured in both legs of our Champions League last-16 win over Atletico Madrid, en route to winning the competition in 2021, an exit he admits is still a painful memory, and there was further reminder of his talents as he caught the eye for Portugal at the 2022 World Cup, shortly before coming to west London.

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However, much of the 23-year-old’s previous career, especially his time in his homeland, may not be as familiar to those at Stamford Bridge, so who better than the man himself to fill in the gaps about his earlier time in football?

‘I was born in Viseu,’ said Joao Felix, starting right at the beginning, with his time as a football-mad child. ‘It’s a city in the middle of Portugal, a lovely city. I love it there sometimes. I still have my home there, my parents go there to Viseu when they are not with me, or with my brother in Lisbon. I have family there, friends there.

‘For as long as I can remember I always played football in every single space that I had. At home, at school, in the street – every time I had a chance to play, I played football.

‘My parents say that when I was too young to start walking I was already playing with the ball. Even now, I always have a ball at home, so sometimes I can touch it.’

The young Joao Felix found he was in good company, though, with his family sharing his love of the game, and his younger brother is currently following in his footsteps as one of the stars of Benfica’s Under-23 side.

However, Hugo Felix first registered on the radar of the Benfica fans at an even younger age, as one of the ball boys at their Estadio de Luz home, when Joao rushed to celebrate with his sibling pitchside after scoring for the Lisbon club in a 4-2 win over Vitoria Setubal in 2019, prompting an emotional moment which soon went viral in Portugal.

‘He’s five years younger, he plays football as well, very well, at Benfica. Since he was born, we always played together with my father. They were lovely moments, moments that I will never forget. Playing so much football was good for me and good for my brother as well.

‘I think it was the first game that he was there as a ball boy. It was such a coincidence that he was behind that goal and I scored in that net. It was such a coincidence but a really good moment. Maybe it wasn’t a coincidence, maybe it was meant to be.’

Between his childhood in Viseu and starring for Benfica in the Portuguese top flight and Europe, there were some tough moments to endure, though.

Looking back, Joao Felix highlights the period when he was seven years old and travelling a 150-mile round trip five days a week with his father to train with the Porto youth team as one of the toughest, along with moving away from home to go full-time with the same club four years later, even if it was all worth it in the end.

‘It was a little bit difficult when I started with Porto because every time I finished school, my dad got me at school and drove me over to Porto for training and after training we’d come back to Viseu. We arrived home at, like, 11pm, and the next day I’d wake up at half-past-seven for school. It was not easy times but the reward is here now. I think my parents deserve that.

‘Going to Porto when I was 11 was very difficult. I remember the first night I called my dad crying and saying: “come get me, I don’t want to stay here, I want to go home”. I remember my father said: “okay I will come for you, I will take you home, but I will never take you to training ever again. You knew that it would be difficult so you need to stay and try, but if you want to come home I will get you”. So I stayed the rest of the night and then for three more years.

‘In the beginning it was very good there but in the last year or two I was having trouble playing in the team. Things didn’t go well. I was too skinny, not tall, that was difficult for me. When I was 14 or 15 years old I told them that I wanted to leave, I wanted to try another club, I wanted to go play at home. I didn’t care, I just wanted to play and be happy. And then the opportunity to go to Benfica appeared and I accepted, for sure.

‘The move to Benfica was important. The adaptation there was easier because I was used to being far from home in Porto. It was very good being there, it was very good for me. I developed a lot and I will always be grateful to Benfica.’

The feeling is no doubt mutual, as Joao Felix made himself a popular figure in the red half of Lisbon by scoring 20 goals in 43 appearances for their senior team, before making an emotional departure from the place he had come to call home and moving abroad to join Atletico Madrid for the next step in his career.

‘It was a little bit of a difficult decision,’ explained Joao Felix. ‘At the beginning I would have preferred to stay but then I think that I made the right choice, because I needed to develop and moving from Benfica to Atletico was good for me, to get me out of my comfort zone. I don’t regret it, I think it was good for me.’

Joao Felix’s first season at Atletico in 2019/20 often found him sharing striking duties with none other than Diego Costa, who had returned for a second spell in Madrid after winning two Premier League titles with Chelsea, and the former Blue certainly seemed to make an impression on his Portuguese team-mate, as well as his family.

‘He taught me a lot of things,’ added Joao. ‘He’s a good guy, an amazing guy, a funny guy, I loved being there with him. Unfortunately I only had one year there with him, but I had lovely moments with him. He’s still my friend. My family love him too, he loves my dad. He’s a really nice guy.’

There have certainly been plenty of ups and downs for the Portugal international in his career so far and, at the age of 23, there are bound to be more in the future. However, after some promising glimpses of Joao Felix’s ability in his first few games for Chelsea, hopefully there will be more highs than lows with the Blues between now and the end of the current campaign.