Manuel António Couto Guimarães (born 25 August 1967), commonly known as Nelo, is a retired Portuguese

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 ...

. On the left side of the field, he could appear as either a defender or a

midfielder A midfielder is an outfield position in association football. Midfielders may play an exclusively defensive role, breaking up attacks, and are in that case known as defensive midfielders. As central midfielders often go across boundarie ...

Football career

Born in

Porto Porto or Oporto () is the second-largest city in Portugal, the capital of the Porto District, and one of the Iberian Peninsula's major urban areas. Porto city proper, which is the entire municipality of Porto, is small compared to its metropol ...

, Nelo grew in local Boavista FC's youth system, then went on to mainly represent its first team as a professional. After an unassuming

season A season is a division of the year based on changes in weather, ecology, and the number of daylight hours in a given region. On Earth, seasons are the result of the axial parallelism of Earth's tilted orbit around the Sun. In temperate and ...

at Primeira Liga side

S.L. Benfica Sport Lisboa e Benfica (), commonly known as Benfica, is a professional football club based in Lisbon, Portugal, that competes in the Primeira Liga, the top flight of Portuguese football. Founded on 28 February 1904 as ''Sport Lisboa'', Be ...

, he returned to his first club in the 1995 summer, then represented another three teams in quick succession. Nelo retired in 2007 in amateur football, at the age of almost 40. He earned 11

caps Caps are flat headgear. Caps or CAPS may also refer to: Science and technology Computing * CESG Assisted Products Service, provided by the U.K. Government Communications Headquarters * Composite Application Platform Suite, by Java Caps, a Ja ...

for

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of ...

, but did not attend any major international tournament – the nation did not qualify for either

UEFA Euro 1992 The 1992 UEFA European Football Championship was hosted by Sweden between 10 and 26 June 1992. It was the ninth UEFA European Championship, which is held every four years and supported by UEFA. Denmark won the 1992 championship, having qualifi ...

and the

1994 FIFA World Cup The 1994 FIFA World Cup was the 15th FIFA World Cup, the world championship for men's national soccer teams. It was hosted by the United States and took place from June 17 to July 17, 1994, at nine venues across the country. The United States ...

External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Nelo 1967 births Living people Footballers from Porto Portuguese footballers Men's association football defenders Men's association football midfielders Primeira Liga players Liga Portugal 2 players Segunda Divisão players Boavista F.C. players F.C. Felgueiras players S.C. Farense players S.L. Benfica footballers Rio Ave F.C. players AD Fafe players Moreirense F.C. players A.D. Lousada players F.C. Vizela players F.C. Tirsense players Portugal men's international footballers