Wolves defender Toti Gomes: A Portugal call-up is a dream come true

The 24-year-old was used sparingly in the early parts of the season but became a key figure at both centre-back and left-back for Julen Lopetegui, as Wolves avoided relegation.

Now, Toti has earned a call-up alongside Wolves team-mates Jose Sa, Nelson Semedo and Ruben Neves for their European Championship qualifiers with Bosnia & Herzegovina and Iceland in June, and the defender believes it has come as a reward for his efforts.

“It’s always good to have news like this, it’s things like this that we’ve been working hard for,” Toti said.

“It will be good and I’ll keep working hard.

“It’s a dream come true, and we will see what happens if I can play.

“It’s all happened quickly but with the hard work I’ve put in on the training ground and on the pitch, from the first day until the end, I hoped this would happen.”

When asked about the contact Portugal boss Roberto Martinez had made before his call-up, Toti added: “He was first in contact with me when he came to the Wolves training ground to speak to all the Portuguese guys.

“It was when he first got the job and he was just introducing himself, nothing more.”

Martinez recently spoke publicly to reveal he was keeping an eye on Toti for a potential call-up, and the former Belgium head coach has now said Toti’s versatility was key in his decision.

Martinez said: “He’s a very interesting player.

“He has different skills, he’s different from other centre-backs. He’s a physical centre-back, very strong in the duel, left-sided. His performances at Wolverhampton were very good. We need players with different features.”

Speaking after Wolves’ 5-0 defeat to Arsenal on Sunday, where Toti was dropped for Hugo Bueno but then came on in the second half at centre-back, the defender has called for Wolves to ‘recover well’ ahead of next season.

“This was not the way we prepared the game,” he said.

“We didn’t want to come here and lose like this.

“For sure, we wanted to do better on the pitch and unfortunately we couldn’t.

“Now it’s all done and we need to go for our holidays and recover well, to come back stronger.”