13 Facts About Raul Meireles

Raul Meireles was born in Porto, and joined local Boavista FC's youth system at the age of seven.

Raul Meireles finished that season with 26 appearances, helping his team to finish in sixth position.

Raul Meireles was awarded the No 4 shirt, which was vacated by Alberto Aquilani who joined Juventus FC on loan.

Raul Meireles finished the season with 33 matches, helping to a final sixth place and being voted the PFA Fans' Player of the Year, beating Dimitar Berbatov, David Luiz, Samir Nasri and Fernando Torres.

Raul Meireles chose the squad number 16, due to the fact he often wore it when on international duty, and later claimed he never wanted to leave Liverpool but that the chance to work with Andre Villas-Boas, with whom he had spent a short period of time at Porto, was too good an opportunity to turn down.

In December 2012, Raul Meireles was handed an eleven-match ban by the Turkish Football Federation for spitting at a referee.

Raul Meireles subsequently participated in the 2001 Meridian Cup with the under-17s, starting three times in an eventual third-place finish.

Raul Meireles appeared for Portugal at the Euro 2012 and 2014 World Cup tournaments.

Raul Meireles was capable of being deployed in both a defensive and attacking role, depending on the players available and coaches' strategies.

Under his Liverpool manager Roy Hodgson, Raul Meireles was deployed as a deep-lying playmaker on occasion.

On 17 February 2009, the couple opened a clothes shop in Ermesinde, and Ivone declared that the idea made sense because both she and Raul Meireles were interested in fashion.

Raul Meireles was a fan of tattoos since he was 18 years old.

Raul Meireles had a large design of a black and red Chinese-style dragon, drawn in two stages and sprawling across his back, and a huge necklace tattoo with a skull, drawn one week after his twenty-eighth birthday.