Youssef Chermiti 17

Everton completed another protracted signing in August 2023 when they landed Sporting CP forward Youssef Chermiti in a deal initially worth €15m and on a contract that would run to 2027. 

The negotiations over the 19-year-old took a while to complete with the two clubs going back and forth over the fee, the player and his father seeking certain financial clauses and then bureaucratic issues related to securing his work permit all dragging out the timeline before he was finally unveiled as the Blues' third signing of the 2023 summer transfer window. 

He was given the No.28 shirt last worn by Cenk Tosun and he gave his reaction to the move in an interview with the official Everton website:

“It’s a big move for me. Joining Everton is a new beginning, a new page and I’m very happy to be here. It is a beautiful city and a beautiful club. I’m looking forward to meeting the fans, my new teammates and to get to work with the coach. I want to embrace everything about the Club. I hope the fans will like me and I want to show them what I am capable of.

“Everton is a big club. A lot of legends have played here. I couldn’t turn down this opportunity.”

Though only a year into his professional career, Chermiti was regarded as a hot prospect by many observers in his native country. He broke into Sporting's senior squad the previous season and played 22 times, scoring three goals.

But despite Everton's chronic lack of fire-power up front, Sean Dyche used him only sparingly in the first half of the Premier League season after giving him his full debut in the Carabao Cup at Doncaster. By the turn of the year, he had made just 8 sub appearances and, when asked about his development, the Everton manager responded,  “His development is going well. He's adjusting to the physicality and nature of the English game, the way it's going in the Premier League.

“He's still a young player. You get a boy in for a few quid and everyone is like: ‘Why aren't they doing this, why aren't they doing that?’

“He's just a high-level development player but he's still a development player. We're looking for him to do that. He's doing it, working hard and enjoying it so far.”

In November 2023, he was included in the Everton U21 side that took on Mansfield Town in the EFL Trophy and secured a late win for the Blues after he was pulled down for a last-minute penalty that he powered home from the spot. And his first Premier League start would come against Brentford at Goodison in late April 2024 when Beto was sidelined by concussion and Dominic Calvert-Lewin was ruled out through injury.

He acquitted himself increasingly well despite feeding off scraps in what was a very direct style deployed by Dyche but in his cameos off the bench as the season wound down, he began to show more and more promise and had, by the end of the campaign, displaced Beto as the first choice striking substitute.

Unfortunately, his hopes of kicking on at the start of 2024-25 were hampered by a foot injury sustained in pre-season that required surgery and sidelined him well into the new campaign.

FactFile