One of the world's most in form strikers: averaging a goal every 65 minutes
In all of world football, you will be hard pushed to find a striker in better form than one Carlos Vinicius.
The Benfica striker joined the Lisbon club in August for £15million, no small fee for a player that struggled to make a significant impact at both Napoli and Monaco.
He did have a spectacular, albeit brief, spell at Rio Ave at the start of last season though, where he scored 14 goals in 20 appearances for the club across all competitions between August and January, meaning that he returned to Portugal with a strong reputation.
And Benfica weren't the only club interested in his services. Premier League side Wolverhampton Wanderers, managed by Nuno Espirito Santo, were actively pursuing the credentials of the Brazilian striker, and would have almost certainly signed him had he been able to get a work permit.
However, because of his lack of senior game time both at club level in Europe and at international level for Brazil, the permit was not granted and he couldn't move to the Premier League.
That opened the door for Benfica, who were willing to pay big bucks by their own standards, and it is so far looking like sound investment.
Brought in to try and fill the void left behind by the departure of João Felix to Atletico Madrid, Vinicius made a slow start to the season, failing to start any of Benfica's first 11 matches across all competitions, or any of their first 8 matches in the league.
That didn't hold him back though, and though he did make something of a slow start, off the bench he was making an impact, ensuring manager Bruno Lage simply couldn't overlook him any longer.
Since then he has started regularly, and is banging in goals at an incredible rate, his hattrick against Maritimo in Benfica's last outing all the confirmation required to show that he's having a great time back in Portugal.
In the league alone, he already has 7 goals this season, while he has followed that up with another 3 in the Portuguese Cup. Add that to the one he bagged in the Champions League vs RB Leipzig, and that takes his tally to 11 goals in 16 appearances, an impressive return in its own right.
However, it becomes even more impressive when you consider that he has only played 704 minutes of football this season, meaning that he is actually s scoring a goal every 64 minutes on average.
If you also take into account the three assists he has contributed this campaign, you can then see that he has directly contributed to a goal every 50 minutes this season, and he is rightly receiving a lot of praise for his impact at Benfica.
