Alessandro Ferreira Leonardo (born 10 March 1987), commonly known as Sandro (), is a Brazilian-born

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...

professional

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...

player who is currently a free agent.

Club career

Citizen

Sandro was sent off after a second bookable offence in the match against

South China South China () is a geographical and cultural region that covers the southernmost part of China. Its precise meaning varies with context. A notable feature of South China in comparison to the rest of China is that most of its citizens are not n ...

, when he pressured Zhang Chunhui to take his goal kick quickly and was considered by the referee to have obstructed the goalkeeper. Citizen lost the match 2–1. Sandro scored a hat-trick against Tai Po on 2 May 2009 to help the club win 4–1 and end the 2008–09 season in third place in the league. On 25 October 2009, Sandro scored 5 goals for Citizen against Happy Valley at

Siu Sai Wan Sports Ground Siu Sai Wan Sports Ground () is a multi-purpose stadium in Siu Sai Wan, Hong Kong. It is currently used mostly for football matches. It occupies about 43,000 square metres and its construction cost over HK $230 million. Opened in December 1996, ...

, including a 50-yard lob. With

Citizen Citizenship is a "relationship between an individual and a state to which the individual owes allegiance and in turn is entitled to its protection". Each state determines the conditions under which it will recognize persons as its citizens, and ...

, Sandro won the

Hong Kong Senior Shield The Hong Kong Senior Challenge Shield (), known commonly as the Senior Shield, is the football knockout inter-club competition held in Hong Kong and the fourth oldest football tournament in Asia. Traditionally, only the teams in the Hong Kong Pr ...

after defeating

in the final on penalties. But his contract was not renewed by the club at the end of the season. Alessandro Ferreira Leonardo (Sandro)

Metro Gallery

Sandro joined Metro Gallery/Rangers for the 2011–12 season. He scored on his debut for the club in the 1–4 defeat away to

Pegasus Pegasus ( grc-gre, Πήγασος, Pḗgasos; la, Pegasus, Pegasos) is one of the best known creatures in Greek mythology. He is a winged divine stallion usually depicted as pure white in color. He was sired by Poseidon, in his role as hor ...

. He scored again in the second game against his old club Citizen to tie the match 2–2.

Pegasus

Sandro joined

for an undisclosed fee before the start of 2012–13 season. However, he only scored 1 goal in 10 matches and was released by the club on 31 December 2012.

Citizen

Sandro re-joined

as a free transfer after he was released by Pegasus.

Kitchee

On 15 July 2015, Sandro was formally signed as a

Kitchee Kitchee Sports Club (; ; ) is a Hong Kong professional Association football, football club based in Kowloon. It was founded in 1931 and currently competes in the Hong Kong Premier League. The club has won championships in Hong Kong 11 times, in ...

player. There was controversy surrounding the move as he had signed a pre-contractual agreement with Eastern nine months prior. While Sandro claimed, through his lawyer's advice that the agreement was not legally binding, Eastern's Executive Director Peter Leung took league action after the Hong Kong Football Association was unable to resolve the situation. Eventually the situation was resolved. During the 2016–17 season, Sandro scored 21 goals en route to winning the Golden Boot. He was rewarded with a new contract on 11 July 2017.

Tai Po

After spending the latter half of 2018 with Indonesian club PSM Makassar, Sandro returned to Hong Kong. He joined Tai Po on 6 February 2019 ahead of their

2019 AFC Cup The 2019 AFC Cup was the 16th edition of the AFC Cup, Asia's secondary club association football, football tournament organized by the Asian Football Confederation (AFC). Al Ahed FC, Al-Ahed won the title for the first time, defeating 4.25 SC, ...

campaign. On 4 May 2019, Sandro scored two goals in the second to lead Tai Po to a 2–1 comeback victory against title rivals R&F. The win clinched Tai Po's first league title in club history. On 26 December 2019, after the match against Lee Man in the semi-final of the

Senior Shield The Hong Kong Senior Challenge Shield (), known commonly as the Senior Shield, is the Association football, football Single-elimination tournament, knockout inter-club competition held in Hong Kong and the List of oldest football competitions, fo ...

, Sandro announced that he would leave the club with immediate effect.

Eastern

On 1 January 2020, less than a week after leaving Tai Po, Sandro signed with Eastern. He scored on his debut for the club in a 2–1 win over Lee Man. On 1 June 2021, Sandro left the club.

Guangxi Pingguo Haliao

On 2 March 2022, Sandro signed with

China League One The Chinese Football Association China League (), also known as China League One or Chinese Jia League (中甲联赛), is the second level of professional football in China. Above League One is the Chinese Super League. Prior to the formation of ...

club

Guangxi Pingguo Haliao Guangxi Pingguo Haliao Football Club () is a professional Chinese football club that currently participates in the China League Two. The team is based in Pingguo, Baise, Guangxi. History On February 27th, 2018, the club was founded by Baoyun R ...

International career

Sandro was born and raised in

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

, but became a naturalized Hong Kong citizen through residency. Sandro made his international debut and scored his first goal for

against

Myanmar Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John C. Wells, Joh ...

on 7 November 2015.

Career statistics

Club

International

International goals

:''Scores and results list Hong Kong's goal tally first.''

Honours

Club

;Citizen *

2010–11 1 (one, unit, unity) is a number representing a single or the only entity. 1 is also a numerical digit and represents a single unit of counting or measurement. For example, a line segment of ''unit length'' is a line segment of length 1. I ...

;Eastern *

Hong Kong FA Cup Hong Kong FA Cup () is a knockout cup competition in Hong Kong football, run by and named after The Hong Kong Football Association. The first edition of the competition was held in 1975, before then the cup was known as the Golden Jubilee Cup. Th ...

: 2019–20 *

: 2019–20 * Hong Kong Sapling Cup:

2020–21 The dash is a punctuation mark consisting of a long horizontal line. It is similar in appearance to the hyphen but is longer and sometimes higher from the baseline. The most common versions are the endash , generally longer than the hyphen b ...

;Kitchee * Hong Kong Premier League: 2016–17, 2017–18 *

: 2016–17 *

: 2016–17, 2017–18 * Hong Kong Sapling Cup: 2017–18 * Hong Kong League Cup: 2015–16 *

Hong Kong Community Cup Hong Kong Community Cup (), formerly known as Hong Kong Community Shield (), is the football super cup competition in Hong Kong played between the winners of the Hong Kong Premier League (previously the Hong Kong First Division League) and the H ...

: 2016–17 *AFC Cup Play-Off: 2015–16 ;Tai Po * Hong Kong Premier League: 2018–19

Individual

Hong Kong First Division The Hong Kong First Division League () is the second-highest division in the Hong Kong football league system. Established in 1908, it is the third oldest in Asia. The league was formerly the highest division in Hong Kong until the formation o ...

Golden Boot: 2011–12 * Hong Kong Premier League Golden Boot: 2016–17

References

External sources

*
Alessandro Ferreira Leonardo
at HKFA * {{DEFAULTSORT:Sandro Living people 1987 births Hong Kong footballers Hong Kong international footballers Brazilian footballers Brazilian emigrants to Hong Kong Hong Kong First Division League players Hong Kong Premier League players Liga 1 (Indonesia) players China League One players Citizen AA players Hong Kong Rangers FC players TSW Pegasus FC players Yuen Long FC players Kitchee SC players PSM Makassar players Tai Po FC players Eastern Sports Club footballers Expatriate footballers in Indonesia Association football forwards Naturalized footballers of Hong Kong Hong Kong expatriate footballers Hong Kong League XI representative players Guangxi Pingguo Haliao F.C. players