Toti Gomes, the main novelty in the national team selection for the June games, played rugby until he was 15 with Escolinha de Rugby da Galiza, in Cascais, and it was only at that age that he ventured into football, in the youth teams from Fontainhas, also from the municipality of Cascais.
“Then I rode an ATL, when I was younger, where we went to college after school and there were activities too, like football, tennis and even rugby. I started practicing for fun, then it started to get more serious with competitions etc . It was something I liked. There were several children there. Later I moved to Cascais and since the ATL was in São João do Estoril, I had to get out of there and play rugby. It was difficult to reconcile. But football is always something that I liked more than rugby itself, but at that time I didn’t have the chance to go to a school or anything like that Later, when the opportunity came up, I asked my father to enroll in Fontainhas, the club that is closer was at home and that’s how I started playing when I was 15,” he told the portal zero zero in February 2014.
Meanwhile, this powerful centre/left defender (1.88m), born in Bissau 24 years ago, played for Dramático Cascais before completing his training in Estoril, having even played for the main squad of Canarinhos in the II Liga.
Vasco Costa, the coach who brought him to Dramatico, thought it was such a shame to let the player participate in the AF Lisboa district championships that he referred him to Estoril. “I met Hugo Leal, he was a training director at Estoril. I said to him, ‘Hugo, I have a very good player here. He shouldn’t be playing in the district, he should be playing in the national championship. it’s very good”. They liked him very much. He had a very good season with the under-19s and then moved on to the under-23s as a professional,” he said. multisoccer in January 2022.
After playing as an attacking midfielder and winger in the early years of the youth team, he gradually retired to the defensive sector.
In the summer of 2020, he transferred to Wolverhampton for almost 800 thousand euros after a serious injury. Loaned to the Swiss after a season and a half Grasshoppers, debuted in the Premier League in January 2022 at the hand of Bruno Lage.
This season, Toti has made 21 appearances for Wolves, 14 of them in the starting line-up, including his last 10 Premier League appearances – scoring in a recent win over Aston Villa.
In terms of national teams, he only played one under-20 match in January 2019, against Cape Verde.
Source: DN
