|
The following biography
is from
Wikipedia.org
“The
Free Encyclopedia.”
Ronaldo de Assis Moreira (born March 21, 1980 in
Porto Alegre, Brazil) is a footballer more commonly known as Ronaldinho Gaúcho.
Ronaldinho is Portuguese for Little Ronaldo, and the nickname was given to
distinguish the then rising star from the injured superstar Ronaldo, who was
playing for the Italian club F.C. Internazionale at the time. Gaúcho is the
nickname for people from the Brazilian player's Rio Grande do Sul region.
He is widely regarded as one of the world's top
active football players after having won the European Footballer of the Year in
2005 and the FIFA World Player of the Year in 2004.
Biography
Ronaldinho started playing football on the beaches
of Brazil, playing futsal in Brazil. Making a name for himself as the top scorer
at the under-17 world championship in Egypt, Ronaldinho began his professional
career at Grêmio, and played there from 1998-2001. In his Brazilian national
team debut on June 26, 1999, he scored his first international goal, against
Venezuela, to win the Copa América. To date, he has won 62 caps for Brazil,
scoring 27 goals.
In 2001, Ronaldinho signed a five-year contract
with Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) and started playing at the beginning of the
season. However, even though Ronaldinho was a free agent from July 1, 2001,
Grêmio demanded compensation from PSG and received $4.5 million. During his time
at PSG, the manager, Luis Fernandez, thought that Ronaldinho was too focused on
the Parisian nightlife rather than on his football.
In 2002, Ronaldinho helped Brazil win the World
Cup. One of the highlights of the tournament was a spectacular 35-metre lob he
scored against England in the quarter-finals in Shizuoka, although he was sent
off soon after scoring for a foul on Danny Mills.
In 2003, Ronaldinho made it known he wanted to
leave PSG after they failed to qualify for European cups. That set off a bidding
war among the elite clubs for his services. On July 19, FC Barcelona snapped him
up for 27 million Euro, beating Manchester United to his signature. Ronaldinho
justified their purchase, leading them to a second-place finish in La Liga
during the 03/04 season.
Together with Samuel Eto'o, Deco, Ludovic Giuly,
Lionel Messi and Henrik Larsson, he comprises part of an awesome strike force
which has already reaped the 04/05 La Liga title for FC Barcelona
On December 20, 2004, Ronaldinho was named FIFA
World Player of the Year over Arsenal's Thierry Henry and AC Milan's Andriy
Shevchenko. On June 29, 2005, Ronaldinho played a pivotal role as the captain of
the Brazilian squad which won its second FIFA Confederations Cup title, in a 4-1
victory over Argentina. Pelé named Ronaldinho in his 125 Top Living Footballers
in March 2004. In 2005 Ronaldinho was named as both the European Footballer of
the Year and the best Striker in the UEFA Champions League tournament of
2004/2005. Ronaldinho is the third Brazilian to win the European Footballer of
the Year Award.
|
Preceded by:
Zinedine Zidane |
FIFA World Player of the Year
2004 |
Succeeded by:
current holder |
|
Preceded by:
n/a |
FIFPro World Player of the Year
2005 |
Succeeded by:
current holder |
|
Preceded by:
Andriy Shevchenko |
European Footballer of the Year
2005 |
Succeeded by:
current holder |
****
The
above biography has been copied in part or in whole
from an article on
Wikipedia.org
"The Free Encyclopedia." It has been modified under
the NGU Free Document License Section 5 in the
following manner: (1) All links within the article
have been removed, including text links such as
"[#]"; (2) The "[Edit]" text and link have been
removed [if you would like to update the article,
you may do so from the original page]; (3) the table
of Contents links and text have been removed; and
(4) all of the sections of the original article have
not been copied. All of the above text is available
under the terms of the
GNU Free Document License.
URL of Original Article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronaldinho
Date Article Copied:
December 19, 2005
We
will try to replace this article with an original
biography in the near future, but we hope this will
be of help to our visitors in the mean time. |
