Like almost everything good that happens at Hull City these days, it started with coffee and ended with the elephant in the room.
Convincing Liverpool’s Fabio Carvalho to swap the Champions League for the Championship in the January transfer window was a major coup for the Tigers, a sign that there is substance behind the swagger of the second tier’s surprise promotion contenders.
Tipped for great things at Liverpool before his Anfield career unexpectedly veered off track last season, Carvalho had been parked at RB Leipzig in the first half of the season.
But with Bundesliga playing time proving hard to come by, Hull’s caffeine-fuelled transfer committee, led by the club’s charismatic executive vice-chairman Tan Kesler, leapt into action.
“In this business, how fast you get information is key. We monitor the German market closely and getting that information first gave us a competitive advantage but convincing players like Fabio isn’t easy,” he tells i.
“Even his agent, who is a great friend of ours, was shocked at our approach for him. He said: ‘Can you afford him?’ I said it’s not a matter of affording him, we want him so much we’re going to clear the budget for him.”
And Hull are getting good at selling their vision. In this case midfielder Jean Michael Seri, a former teammate and close friend of Carvalho’s, made the initial call. Then a Zoom chat with manager Liam Rosenior was gatecrashed by owner Acun Ilicali to stress the club’s intention to make him a franchise player in a serious promotion tilt.
It ended how all the club’s player recruitment meetings do: with the “elephant in the room”. Carvalho was asked to account for why things hadn’t worked out in Germany – a sort of test of his honesty, accountability and openness to improve. Hull and Rosenior liked what came back.
That candour is present when i speaks to Carvalho early on a midweek morning before training at Cottingham.
The Portuguese is courteous and content. But he is also not taking any backward steps on his goals, emphasising that his ambition remains “to be one of the best in the Premier League”.
“That’s why, first and foremost, I went to Liverpool,” he says. “I wanted to play with the best players and learn from the best players. You can’t be the best if you don’t play with the best.”
And you can’t be the best if you’re not playing. Pressing reset on his career at the MKM Stadium is about minutes in an environment where he’s valued and challenged.
“I’m playing games and I’m absolutely loving it,” he says.
“I clicked with the manager the first time we spoke and something he said then has stuck with me. He told me ‘You need to be going into a dressing room and going into training excited about training and excited about how you can improve.’ He told me I’m getting to the stage where I need to get better every day, I need to improve and can’t just go somewhere and be on the bench or not playing.
“It’s about playing, it’s about getting the most out of game time and that’s just stuck with me. This is where I need to be now.”
Was there frustration that he didn’t get that in Germany, where he was limited to just 360 minutes on the pitch?
“I wouldn’t say frustration. I don’t know how to explain it,” he said.
“As a player all I want to do is play and I didn’t. It wasn’t frustration because I was still trying to do my best in training and I wasn’t trying to let it get to my head. Subconsciously it might [have done] because I’m only human but it was a learning curve and I’m grateful for every moment that I had at RB Leipzig, it taught me a hell of a lot.”
Perhaps unfairly his attitude was questioned after his loan was cancelled but those have got to know him at Hull can’t speak highly enough of him. Humility is a theme. At his first away game he tidied the coach before getting off and Rosenior has picked up on little things like tidying other players’ flip flops away after training.
“It’s what I’ve been brought up with. So in my household if something’s in the wrong place, you don’t wait for someone else to put it away,” he says.
“It’s what the manager relays in his team talks – have your mates’ back. That’s every day, in training if things are sorted the right way, and it goes across to games, working for each other.”
His Anfield career is on pause for now, to the extent that recent press conference praise from Jurgen Klopp for his contribution at Hull went unnoticed.
“I’m not really on social media, I don’t really listen to interviews and that what you’ve told me, you’re the first person to tell me,” he says.
“Jurgen has obviously done amazing things for the club and he’s an inspiration to many, many people. Obviously things have gone how they’ve gone but I owe him a lot. I wish him all the best for the rest of this season and hopefully I can chat with him before he goes. He’s helped me so much.”
When he signed for RB Leipzig there was confusion over an introductory press conference where he said he doesn’t really speak to Klopp. “Yeah, yeah. I had to clear it up,” he says.
“From now on I don’t have to clear up anything because I don’t owe anyone an explanation. At that time it was the right thing to do. When I said I don’t really speak to him it wasn’t me being arrogant, it was just honest, I didn’t really speak to him before I went.
“But I have spoken to him since, he gave me good advice and that won’t happen again where I have to explain myself to anyone.”
Could his future lie at Liverpool under Klopp’s successor?
“I just want to concentrate on where I am now, which is Hull, and whatever else happens will happen,” he says.
“Obviously there’s going to be a few changes but I’ll just leave it to God and wherever he guides me, I’ll go.”
In East Yorkshire there are no such doubts. Kesler does not shy away from the fact the club would love to make his move permanent in the summer, an ambition that he says will be pursued relentlessly if they are promoted.
“I’m not going to say it’s easy because the financials are strong,” he tells i.
“[He has] a Premier League level salary [and] Liverpool are going to demand quite a bit of a transfer fee for him. The chairman would want to sign him, he would do it in a heartbeat, if there’s no FFP, no regulations, no control, I’m sure we will invest to sign Fabio.
“If we’re promoted for sure we will pursue him because of the money we would be receiving, we would try to allocate those finances on players like Fabio. It can be unrealistic expectations for some of our fans but we’re very optimistic. If any of this happens we will do it because he’s someone we would love to have long term.”
First they must get to the promised land. Carvalho, who has one promotion with Fulham already on his CV, is confident: “We’ve got a good group – a mixture of experience and youth. If we stick to the manager’s gameplan, we’ll be fine.” Being the main man once again appears to suit him.
