Carlos Forbs has been given Portugal\u2019s No. 7 shirt, becoming the first player to wear it since Cristiano Ronaldo\u2019s international retirement. The 22-year-old winger, whose spell at Wolverhampton Wanderers did not produce a breakthrough, is now set to carry the number for at least this month after being named in Portugal\u2019s official squad list on UEFA\u2019s website.<\/p>\n
The decision comes with the Nations League leaving Jorge Jesus little room to manoeuvre ahead of Saturday\u2019s meeting with Denmark. The coach, who played a significant role in Ronaldo\u2019s abrupt retirement, has now placed the spotlight on Forbs, a player many observers would not have expected to inherit such a shirt.<\/p>\n
That surprise is understandable for anyone whose main memory of Forbs is his difficult loan at Wolves during a 2024-25 campaign spent fighting relegation. Even so, the Club Brugge forward has long been viewed as a talented wide player. He was once part of Manchester City\u2019s academy from the age of 10 and later earned Premier League 2 Player of the Season recognition in 2022-23 before Ajax paid \u20ac14 million ($15.4 million) for him as a teenager without a senior appearance.<\/p>\n
His path since then has been uneven. A challenging first season in the Netherlands was followed by a loan move back to England, where he struggled to fit into V\u00edtor Pereira\u2019s system. \u201cTo do what I want in this system is difficult for him when we are defending,\u201d Wolves\u2019 Portuguese coach V\u00edtor Pereira explained. \u201cHe doesn\u2019t have the skill to go and come back to defend, it\u2019s difficult.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not about his quality because he has quality, he\u2019s strong one against one, he\u2019s very fast. But in my system, he cannot play inside in between the lines because he doesn\u2019t have these skills. And to play outside is a different profile of player.\u201d<\/p>\n
Forbs had only one senior international cap before this break, but he already knows what it means to wear the shirt. When Ronaldo was last absent, Forbs stepped in and came off the bench to win a penalty in Portugal\u2019s 9-1 victory over Armenia after the veteran had been sent off against the Republic of Ireland.<\/p>\n
Now, after being overlooked for the World Cup squad and the autumn fixtures, he has been handed the number that carries so much weight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Forbs inherits Portugal\u2019s famous No. 7 shirt after Ronaldo\u2019s exit, with Denmark next up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22465,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[961,783],"tags":[59,180],"class_list":["post-22466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","category-wolverhampton-wanderers","tag-featured","tag-player-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22466"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22466\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}