There is no doubt about the most successful import from the Primeira Liga — Cristiano Ronaldo, who also came from Sporting.
The 18-year-old, then a winger, joined Manchester United for £12.24m in August 2003.
He went on to score 118 goals in 292 appearances for United — with 103 of those in the Premier League.
He won three Premier League titles, the Champions League and a Ballon d’Or before a world-record £80m move to Real Madrid.
The next most prolific player to make the move from Portugal to England was also a Sporting to United signing — Bruno Fernandes.
The now United captain has scored 62 goals in 195 Premier League appearances — with a total of 98 goals in 290 games for the club — following his January 2020 move for a fee of £47m, rising to £67.7m.
In between those two, Nani also made the Sporting to United move in 2007 and netted 25 times in England.
Looking at out-and-out strikers, Mexico forward Raul Jimenez has scored 59 Premier League goals for Wolves and Fulham.
He joined Wolves from Benfica for a then club-record £30m in 2019 after a successful loan spell.
But for every Ronaldo, there is a Mario Jardel. The Brazilian won the Golden Boot five times in Portugal and netted 179 goals in 176 games in the country’s top flight.
«His goals-per-game ratio is second to none anywhere in the world. We have found a striker who is going to score goals for us on a regular basis,» said Bolton manager Sam Allardyce when they signed him in August 2003.
Aged 29, he only made seven substitute appearances in the Premier League, with his only three goals for the club coming in the League Cup.
Allardyce would go on to call him the worst player he ever managed.
Jardel was the first Portuguese league top scorer to move to the Premier League — with Gyokeres the most recent — and there were three in between.
Benni McCarthy top scored with Porto in 2003-04 and two years later joined Blackburn Rovers.
In his first season with Rovers he scored 18 Premier League goals and was only two behind Golden Boot winner Didier Drogba.
He would score 37 league goals in 109 games for Blackburn — and none in 11 for West Ham.
Carlos Vinicius and Darwin Nunez are the other players to win recent Portuguese Golden Boots — both with Benfica — before less-than-prolific spells in England.
Vinicius joined Tottenham on loan in 2020 and then Fulham permanently in 2022 — and has scored a combined eight goals in 53 Premier League matches.
Nunez, meanwhile, has netted 25 goals in 95 league games for Liverpool since his £64m move three years ago.
