Ricardo Carvalho returned to training on Thursday and noticed one thing - an abundance of fellow Portuguese footballers.

The first team squad has been strengthened with the addition of Deco and José Bosingwa, which takes the number to five, joining Carvalho, Paulo Ferreira and Hilario in the ranks.

Added to this are reserve team youngsters Ricardo Fernandes and Fabio Ferreira, not to mention the Portuguese-speaking Brazilians Juliano Belletti and Alex, and Luiz Felipe Scolari and his coaching staff.

'There are too many!' Carvalho joked. 'There are now lots of Portuguese players at the club with the arrival of Deco and Bosingwa. I played with both at Porto, and then Deco went to Barcelona and everybody knows him.

'As people saw over the summer, Bosingwa is a quick right-back, first choice in the national team, whereas Deco is a midfielder and has too much quality, everyone knows him!'

As team-mates on opposite sides of the field in the national team, Bosingwa and Ferreira are likely to be rivals as they vie for the right-back berth at Stamford Bridge.

'Bosingwa and Paulo are a little different, José is very quick and goes forward, whereas Paulo likes to defend well,' Carvalho explained.

Having worked with Scolari with Portugal for the past five years, Carvalho is well-placed to assess his new club manager, and has found himself fielding questions from team-mates about the Brazilian.

'Everybody has asked me about the new coach, and when I arrived everybody had already started to train. They were surprised that we were doing so much running, a little bit more than normal,' he said. 'They asked if it will carry on or not, and I said it's okay, he likes to work hard and prepare well.'

Preparations certainly appear to be going well, as the tour of Asia nears. It is a trip Carvalho is looking forward to after a brief rest from football.

'We had a month off, but I had the Euro 2008 to play so only a short holiday, and now I am back it is good to see all the people again, fighting for the club together like we have for the past few years.

'For my holiday I stayed in Portugal, I have two kids and one of them is too young to travel at nine months, so I went to the Algarve as well for ten days, and it was very nice to relax.'