Cosimo Marco Da Graca (born 1 May 2002) is an Italian professional

footballer A football player or footballer is a sportsperson who plays one of the different types of football. The main types of football are association football, American football, Canadian football, Australian rules football, Gaelic football, rugby ...

who plays as a striker for club

Juventus Next Gen Juventus Next Gen (), also known as Juve Next Gen or Juve NG (), is a professional football club based in Turin, Piedmont, Italy, which acts as the reserve team of club Juventus. They compete in , and play their home games at the Stadio Gius ...

Club career

Youth career

Da Graca began his youth career at Sicilia aged 10, before moving to Palermo's youth sector aged 12. He stayed there until 2018, when he moved to Juventus on loan, before making the move permanent in 2019 for €600,000.

Juventus

On 28 October 2020, Da Graca made his

Serie C The Serie C () is the third-highest division in the Italian football league system after the Serie B and Serie A. The Lega Italiana Calcio Professionistico (Lega Pro) is the governing body that runs the Serie C. The unification of the Lega Pro ...

debut for Juventus U23, the reserve team of Juventus, in a 2–1 defeat to

Como Como (, ; lmo, Còmm, label= Comasco , or ; lat, Novum Comum; rm, Com; french: Côme) is a city and ''comune'' in Lombardy, Italy. It is the administrative capital of the Province of Como. Its proximity to Lake Como and to the Alps h ...

. He scored his first goal for Juventus U23 on 7 March as a second-half substitute, scoring the game's sole goal in the 85th minute against

Grosseto Grosseto () is a city and ''comune'' in the central Italian region of Tuscany, the capital of the Province of Grosseto. The city lies from the Tyrrhenian Sea, in the Maremma, at the centre of an alluvial plain on the Ombrone river. It is the ...

. He was first called up to the senior side on 2 December 2020, as an unused substitute in a

UEFA Champions League The UEFA Champions League (abbreviated as UCL, or sometimes, UEFA CL) is an annual club football competition organised by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) and contested by top-division European clubs, deciding the competi ...

group stage game against

Dynamo Kyiv Football Club Dynamo Kyiv (, ) is a Ukrainian professional football club based in Kyiv. Founded in 1927 as a Kyivan football team of republican branch of the bigger Soviet Dynamo Sports Society, the club as a separate business entity was officia ...

. Da Graca played his first game for Juventus on 27 January 2021, coming on as a substitute in a 4–0 win over

SPAL Società Polisportiva Ars et Labor, commonly known as S.P.A.L. (), is a professional football club based in Ferrara, Emilia-Romagna, Italy. The team plays in Serie B, the second tier of the Italian football league system. Founded in 1907, sinc ...

in the

Coppa Italia The ("Italy Cup") is an annual knockout cup competition in Italian football organized by the FIGC until the 2009–10 season and the Lega Serie A ever since. History The beginning of the tournament was turbulent, due to the complexity of ...

. On 15 April, Juventus renewed Da Graca's contract until June 2024. Da Graca started the 2021–22 season with some muscular injuries. His debut in the season came on 24 October, coming on as substitute in the 71st minute in a 1–1 home draw against

Pro Sesto Pro Sesto 1913 S.r.l. (formerly ''Associazione Sportiva Dilettantistica Nuova Pro Sesto'' and initially ''Associazione Calcio Pro Sesto'') is an association football club, based in Sesto San Giovanni, Lombardy, Italy. Pro Sesto currently plays ...

; he also scored the equalizing goal in the 89th minute. On 8 December, Da Graca made his

debut in a 1–0 win against

Malmö Malmö (, ; da, Malmø ) is the largest city in the Swedish county (län) of Scania (Skåne). It is the third-largest city in Sweden, after Stockholm and Gothenburg, and the sixth-largest city in the Nordic region, with a municipal pop ...

, coming on as substitute in the 89th minute. On 17 January 2022, Da Graca was ruled out for a month to undergo treatment after it was diagnosed that he suffered from an irregular heartbeat. Da Graca's first mach after his injury came on 23 February, in a match against Pro Patria won 1–0. On 12 May, he scored a 30th-minute decider in Juventus U23's 1–0 away win to Renate in the third round of play-offs, allowing his team to access the further round.

Loan to Amorebieta

On 30 August 2023, Da Graca extended his contract with Juventus until 2025, and subsequently joined Spanish side

Amorebieta Amorebieta-Etxano, also known as Zornotza (Spanish, ''Amorebieta-Echano''), is a town and municipality located in Biscay in the Basque Country, an Autonomous Community in northern Spain. At the time of the 2019 census, the population of the muni ...

on loan for the rest of the season. After failing to break through the starting eleven of the first team, both parties agreed upon cutting short the loan deal, with Da Graca returning to Juventus on 11 January 2024.

International career

Eligible to represent Cape Verde through his father, Da Graca has played for Italy at youth level. He went on trial for the under-15s, before playing eight games for the under-16s in 2018.

Style of play

A left-footed player, Da Graca started out as a winger, before becoming a

centre-forward Forwards (also known as attackers) are outfield positions in an association football team who play the furthest up the pitch and are therefore most responsible for scoring goals as well as assisting them. As with any attacking player, the role ...

because of his height of and his physicality.

Personal life

Da Graca was born in Palermo, Italy, to a father from Praia, Cape Verde. He is of Portuguese descent.

Career statistics

Club

Honours

Juventus *

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 ...

Notes

References

External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Da Graca, Marco 2002 births Living people Italian people of Cape Verdean descent Italian people of Portuguese descent Cape Verdean people of Italian descent Footballers from Palermo Italian men's footballers Men's association football forwards Palermo FC players Juventus FC players Juventus Next Gen players SD Amorebieta footballers Serie C players Segunda División players Italy men's youth international footballers Italian expatriate men's footballers Expatriate men's footballers in Spain Italian expatriate sportspeople in Spain