Jose Mourinho says Joao Felix is on track to become a 'great player' as speculation mounts over his transfer future.
The Benfica youngster has been one of the star performers in Europe this season with his performances drawing speculation of a summer move to Manchester United or Man City.
Felix has been on fire this season having netted 20 goals and notching 11 assists as he burst onto the scene with a sensational breakthrough campaign.
However, Mourinho believes much of Felix's success has been down to the healthy environment of the Benfica side and the attacking role which it allows him to have.
"To start with, I think it's more important to describe even superficially Benfica's team, which was the habitat where he developed, and which allowed him to have conditions for it," he told Eleven Sports.
"I think things start there a little bit. The Portuguese championship is a championship that obviously has a big gap between the top teams and the others that allows a team to develop a dominant game, which is what Benfica is developing at the moment.
"It's a dominating team, that enters the field and wants to win, wants to score, that doesn't have fears, that is winning by 1-0, 2-0 and that wants to win by three or four and that doesn't fear the power - that also isn’t much - of the opponents. Joao is developing in a habitat created by Bruno Lage [the coach] and he develops his qualities.
"He said the other day that his position was that of a free role. A free role in high level football may not exist. A free role but subject to certain principles of play that he must know and surely knows.
"I think he's a player who has a fantastic ability. From the point of view of defensive organisation, it's better than what you might think. Usually when you say you have a free role, you think you're not defending. He defends and I think he defends well.
"And I think that Bruno has defined from game to game the moments of pressure, the positions of pressure, and Joao Felix presses, recovers, closes spaces, has a very good understanding of the game. I think he's on the right track to be a great player. This issue of selling, not selling, should sell, should not sell, should leave, should not leave, Benfica is the one who knows, Joao Felix knows, his family knows. It is very difficult to say what can be better for each one."
