Signing young players and developing them for the future is the new fashion in football and Everton are a club who have certainly bought into it.
Under Marcel Brands guiding hand, the Toffees have made youth their focus moving forward, with the Dutchman keen to replicate the work he did at PSV Eindhoven.
As a result, Everton scouting youngsters around Europe is a regular thing these days and Portugal has been a regular hunting ground.
It seems they had an official in the country again last night, with Record reporting they were in attendance for Benfica’s Champions League clash with RB Leipzig.
The newspaper makes no mention of who they were there to watch, but there’s every chance it was youngster Nuno Tavares.
The Blues have been linked with the 19-year-old on several occasions throughout the past year, with regular reports from Portugal they were scouting him and teammate Pedro Alvaro.
Unfortunately, if those were the two Everton were looking at, then they will have been left disappointed. Alvaro didn’t make the squad while Tavares failed to make it off the bench in Benfica’s 1-2 defeat to the Germans.
Still, he’s a signing that would make plenty of sense for them. He can play at left-back or right-back, meaning competition for Seamus Coleman and Lucas Digne, is only 19 years old and could be available for a relatively low price.
All of those things fit perfectly into the Marcel Brands model, and it would not be surprising to find Everton scouts are at Benfica games, both in Liga Nos and the Champions League, more often in the coming months.
