Matheus Bitencourt da Silva (28 June 1995 – 28 November 2016), known as Matheus Biteco, was a Brazilian 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 le ...

who played as a defensive midfielder for Chapecoense. Matheus Biteco was one of the victims when

LaMia Airlines Flight 2933 LaMia Flight 2933 was a charter flight of an Avro RJ85, operated by LaMia, that on 28 November 2016 crashed near Medellín, Colombia, killing 71 of the 77 people on board. The aircraft was transporting the Brazilian Chapecoense football squad a ...

crashed on 28 November 2016.

Club career

Matheus Biteco was born in

Porto Alegre Porto Alegre (, , Brazilian ; ) is the capital and largest city of the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul. Its population of 1,488,252 inhabitants (2020) makes it the List of largest cities in Brazil, twelfth most populous city in the country ...

Rio Grande do Sul Rio Grande do Sul (, , ; "Great River of the South") is a Federative units of Brazil, state in the South Region, Brazil, southern region of Brazil. It is the Federative_units_of_Brazil#List, fifth-most-populous state and the List of Brazilian st ...

, and joined Grêmio's youth setup in 2001 at the age of five. He made his senior debut on 1 February 2013, coming on as a second half substitute in a 0–4 Campeonato Gaúcho away loss against São Luiz. He was handed his first start 13 days later, in a 5–0 Campeonato Gaúcho home routing of Santa Cruz; his older brother Guilherme also started the match. Matheus Biteco made his Série A debut on 14 July 2013, replacing Souza in a 2–1 home win against Botafogo. Definitely promoted to the main squad ahead of the 2014 season, he started to feature more regularly, contributing with 18 league matches. In December 2014, Matheus Biteco's federative rights were sold to a group of businessmen, being assigned to Santa Catarina-based club Barra and being loaned back to Grêmio for the season. He would spend the vast majority of the year nursing a

pubalgia Athletic pubalgia, also called sports hernia, core injury, hockey hernia, hockey groin, Gilmore's groin, or groin disruption is a medical condition of the pubic joint affecting athletes. It is a syndrome characterized by chronic groin pain in a ...

in Switzerland, however. In February 2016 Matheus Biteco joined

TSG 1899 Hoffenheim Turn- und Sportgemeinschaft 1899 Hoffenheim e.V., or simply TSG 1899 Hoffenheim or just Hoffenheim () is a German professional football club based in Hoffenheim, a village of Sinsheim municipality, Baden-Württemberg. Originally founded in 1899 ...

, but failed to appear in any matches for the club. On 5 July, he was announced at Chapecoense. At ''Chape'' Matheus Biteco became a regular starter, also helping the side to reach the

2016 Copa Sudamericana Finals The 2016 Copa Sudamericana Finals were scheduled to be the two-legged final that would decide the winner of the 2016 Copa Sudamericana, the 15th edition of the Copa Sudamericana, South America's secondary international club football tournament orga ...

for the first time in their history.

Death

On 28 November 2016, whilst travelling with Chapecoense to the aforementioned finals, Matheus Biteco was among the fatalities of the

LaMia Flight 2933 LaMia Flight 2933 was a charter flight of an Avro RJ85, operated by LaMia, that on 28 November 2016 crashed near Medellín, Colombia, killing 71 of the 77 people on board. The aircraft was transporting the Brazilian Chapecoense football squad a ...

accident in the Colombian village of Cerro Gordo,

La Unión, Antioquia La Unión is a town and municipality in the Colombian department of Antioquia. It is part of the subregion of Eastern Antioquia. Climate La Unión has a relatively cold subtropical highland climate An oceanic climate, also known as a ma ...

Personal life

Matheus Biteco's brothers Guilherme and Gabriel, are also footballers; all of them were groomed at Grêmio. The former is an attacking midfielder, while the latter is a

forward Forward is a relative direction, the opposite of backward. Forward may also refer to: People * Forward (surname) Sports * Forward (association football) * Forward (basketball), including: ** Point forward ** Power forward (basketball) ** Sm ...

Career statistics

Honours

Club

Chapecoense *

Copa Sudamericana The CONMEBOL Sudamericana, named as ''Copa Sudamericana'' (; pt, Copa Sul-Americana ), is an annual international club football competition organized by CONMEBOL since 2002. It is the second-most prestigious club competition in South American ...

2016 File:2016 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Bombed-out buildings in Ankara following the 2016 Turkish coup d'état attempt; the impeachment trial of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff; Damaged houses during the 2016 Nagorno-Karabakh ...

(posthumously)

International

Brazil U20 * Toulon Tournament:

2013 File:2013 Events Collage V2.png, From left, clockwise: Edward Snowden becomes internationally famous for leaking classified NSA wiretapping information; Typhoon Haiyan kills over 6,000 in the Philippines and Southeast Asia; The Dhaka garment fact ...

References

External links

* * 1995 births 2016 deaths Footballers from Porto Alegre Brazilian footballers Association football midfielders Campeonato Brasileiro Série A players Grêmio Foot-Ball Porto Alegrense players Associação Chapecoense de Futebol players TSG 1899 Hoffenheim players Brazil under-20 international footballers Brazilian expatriate footballers Brazilian expatriate sportspeople in Germany Expatriate footballers in Germany Footballers killed in the LaMia Flight 2933 crash {{Brazil-footy-midfielder-1990s-stub