Rafael de Andrade Bittencourt Pinheiro (born 3 March 1982) simply known as Rafael, is a Brazilian retired

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

goalkeeper In many team sports which involve scoring goals, the goalkeeper (sometimes termed goaltender, netminder, GK, goalie or keeper) is a designated player charged with directly preventing the opposing team from scoring by blocking or intercepting o ...

. He also holds an Italian passport.

Biography

Early career

He left Brazil for Italy after playing 17 (out of 19) matches in 2007

Campeonato Paulista The Campeonato Paulista Série A1, commonly known as Campeonato Paulista, nicknamed Paulistão, is the top-flight professional association football, football league in the Brazilian States of Brazil, state of São Paulo (state), São Paulo. Run b ...

for

Esporte Clube São Bento Esporte Clube São Bento, commonly referred to as São Bento, is a Brazilian professional association football club based in Sorocaba, São Paulo. They currently compete in the Série D, the fourth tier of the Brazilian football league system, ...

, ahead of Maurício Assoline. He was an understudy of

Júlio Sérgio Júlio Sérgio Bertagnoli (born 8 November 1978) is a Brazilian association football, football manager and former player who played as a Goalkeeper (association football), goalkeeper. He is the current assistant manager of Coritiba Foot Ball Clu ...

and

Fábio Costa Fabio Costa (born 27 November 1977 in Camaçari, Bahia) is a former Brazilian goalkeeper. Career Costa played for Brazil under-23 and won the 1996 Toulon Tournament and the 2000 South American Pre-Olympic Tournament. He was part of the Brazi ...

Santos FC Santos Futebol Clube (), commonly known simply as Santos or Santos FC and nicknamed the ''Peixe'' (; "fish"), is a Brazilian sports club based in Vila Belmiro, a '' bairro'' in the city of Santos. It is also the team with the most goals i ...

Verona

Verona Verona ( , ; vec, Verona or ) is a city on the Adige River in Veneto, Northern Italy, Italy, with 258,031 inhabitants. It is one of the seven provincial capitals of the region. It is the largest city Comune, municipality in the region and the ...

, after missing only three games (of a possible 136) in four seasons of

Lega Pro 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 ...

, the third highest football league in Italy, Rafael played a crucial role in helping his team reach the

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 ...

Lega Pro Division One playoffs and win them, to return to

Serie B The Serie B (), currently named Serie Balkrishna Industries, BKT for sponsorship reasons, is the second-highest division in the Italian football league system after the Serie A. It has been operating for over ninety years since the 1929–30 ...

after a four-year absence. Two seasons later, the Brazilian goalkeeper and his teammates of Verona reach the second place and were promoted to Serie A, with Rafael that impose itself as the best goalkeeper in the junior category (only 29 goals conceded in 40 games). Rafael was successively confirmed as first choice keeper for the club's Serie A comeback season in 2013, despite the signing of

Bulgarian international The Bulgarian Open Championship is an annual international badminton championships held in Bulgaria since 1985, by then known as Bulgarian International. It was halted between 1996 and 1998, and in 2000. The tournament belongs to the Badminton Europ ...

Nikolay Mihaylov Nikolay Borislavov Mihaylov ( bg, Николай Бориславов Михайлов; born 28 June 1988) is a Bulgarian professional footballer who plays as a goalkeeper for Levski Sofia, where he is also the captain, and the Bulgarian natio ...

, playing 37 games out of 38 during the full championship.

Cagliari

In 2016 he was sold to

Cagliari Cagliari (, also , , ; sc, Casteddu ; lat, Caralis) is an Italian municipality and the capital of the island of Sardinia, an autonomous region of Italy. Cagliari's Sardinian name ''Casteddu'' means ''castle''. It has about 155,000 inhabitant ...

, with Marco Fossati moved to opposite direction. Cagliari also loaned out its backup goalkeeper

Simone Colombi Simone Colombi (born 1 July 1991) is an Italian professional Association football, footballer who plays as a Goalkeeper (association football), goalkeeper for club Reggina 1914, Reggina. Club career Atalanta Born in Seriate, the Province of B ...

in the same week.

Spezia

On 17 September 2020, Rafael joined

Spezia La Spezia (, or , ; in the local Spezzino dialect) is the capital city of the province of La Spezia and is located at the head of the Gulf of La Spezia in the southern part of the Liguria region of Italy. La Spezia is the second largest city ...

on a free transfer.

Career statistics

¹European competitions include the

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 competit ...

.
²Other tournaments include the

Supercoppa Italiana The Supercoppa Italiana ( en, Italian Super Cup) is an annual football match contested by the winners of the Serie A and the Coppa Italia in the previous season. If the same team wins both the Serie A and Coppa Italia titles in the previous seaso ...

and Serie B relegation play–offs.

References

External links

*http://futpedia.globo.com/jogadores/rafael16 1982 births Living people Footballers from São Paulo Brazilian footballers Brazilian people of Italian descent Brazilian expatriate footballers Serie A players Serie B players Serie C players Sport Club Corinthians Paulista players Santos FC players Esporte Clube São Bento players Hellas Verona F.C. players Cagliari Calcio players Spezia Calcio players Expatriate footballers in Italy Brazilian expatriate sportspeople in Italy Association football goalkeepers {{Brazil-footy-goalkeeper-stub