Rui Pedro da Silva e Sousa (born 20 March 1998), known as Rui Pedro, is a Portuguese 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 plays as a

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or winger for Turkish Süper Lig club Hatayspor.

Club career

Born in

Castelo de Paiva Castelo de Paiva () is a town and a municipality of the Aveiro District in Portugal. The population in 2011 was 16,733, in an area of 115.01 km2. On 4 March 2001 at 9 pm, a 116-year-old metal bridge linking the parish/council of Sobrado (a.k ...

Aveiro District Aveiro District ( pt, Distrito de Aveiro, or ) is located in the central coastal region of Portugal. The capital of the district is the city of Aveiro, which also serves as the seat of Aveiro Municipality. Aveiro District is bordered by the Po ...

, Rui Pedro joined Porto's youth system in 2012, aged 14. On 24 January 2015, at the age of 16, he made his professional debut with their B team, coming on as a late substitute in a 1–0 away loss against

Oliveirense União Desportiva Oliveirense (UDO), commonly known as Oliveirense, is a Portuguese sports club from the city of Oliveira de Azeméis, in Aveiro District. The club was founded on 25 October 1922. The main football team currently plays at the Est ...

in the Segunda Liga. On 3 December 2016, whilst still a junior, Rui Pedro first appeared in the

Primeira Liga The Primeira Liga (; English: Premier League, also written as Liga Portugal 1), also known as Liga Portugal Bwin for sponsorship reasons, is the top level of the Portuguese football league system. Organised and supervised by the Liga Portugal, ...

with the main squad; after replacing

Óliver Torres Óliver Torres Muñoz (; born 10 November 1994) is a Spanish professional footballer who plays for Sevilla as a central midfielder or an attacking midfielder. After starting out at Atlético Madrid he went on spend several years in Portugal with ...

15 minutes from the end of the home fixture against Braga, he scored the only goal in

injury time Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...

, ending the club's negative run of 520 minutes without finding the net. Four days later, also from the bench, he played his first match in the UEFA Champions League, as the hosts defeated already qualified Leicester City 5–0 to also reach the knockout stage; late in the year, UEFA.com selected him as their "weekly wonderkid". Rui Pedro went on to serve four loans during his spell at the Estádio do Dragão, starting out at Boavista (top division), then moving to Varzim (second tier), Granada B (Spanish

Segunda División B Segunda División B ( en, Second Division B) was the third tier of the Spanish football league system containing 102 teams divided into five groups, until it was replaced by the new structure in 2021. It was administered by the Royal Spanish Foot ...

) and

Leixões The Port of Leixões ( pt, Porto de Leixões, ) is one of Portugal's major seaports, located 4 km north of the mouth of the Douro River, in Matosinhos municipality, near the city of Porto Porto or Oporto () is the second-largest city i ...

(division two). In September 2020, he signed a permanent two-year contract with the latter. From

January 2021 File:2021 collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: the James Webb Space Telescope was launched in 2021; Protesters in Yangon, Myanmar following the coup d'état; A civil demonstration against the October 2021 coup in Sudan; Crowd shortly after ...

June 2022 File:2022 collage V1.png, Clockwise, from top left: Road junction at Yamato-Saidaiji Station several hours after the assassination of Shinzo Abe; 2022 Sri Lankan protests, Anti-government protest in Sri Lanka in front of the Presidential Secretari ...

, Rui Pedro continued competing in his country's second division with Penafiel, but he only managed to score five times in all competitions during his tenure. In August 2022, he agreed to a deal at Olimpija Ljubljana of the Slovenian PrvaLiga. He claimed the

double A double is a look-alike or doppelgänger; one person or being that resembles another. Double, The Double or Dubble may also refer to: Film and television * Double (filmmaking), someone who substitutes for the credited actor of a character * Th ...

in his first season at the latter, contributing six goals in the league. Rui Pedro was deemed surplus to requirements by manager

Zoran Zeljković Zoran Zeljković (born 9 May 1980) is a Slovenian professional football manager and former player who is the manager of Slovenian PrvaLiga side Olimpija Ljubljana. Honours Domžale *Slovenian PrvaLiga: 2006–07 Interblock *Slovenian Cup: ...

in January 2024 due to contract issues, in spite of leading the team and league in scoring and having been voted Player of the Month for the previous November. He moved to Turkey on 9 February, signing a two-and-a-half-year deal with Süper Lig club Hatayspor.

Career statistics

Honours

Porto B *

LigaPro The Liga Portugal 2 (), also known as Liga Portugal 2 SABSEG for sponsorship reasons, is the second-highest division of the Portuguese football league system. At the end of each season, the two top-finishing teams are promoted to the top-tier Prim ...

: 2015–16 Olimpija Ljubljana * Slovenian PrvaLiga:

2022–23 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 ...

* Slovenian Cup:

Individual *Slovenian PrvaLiga Player of the Month: November 2023 * UEFA European Under-19 Championship Team of the Tournament:

2017 File:2017 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: The War Against ISIS at the Battle of Mosul (2016-2017); aftermath of the Manchester Arena bombing; The Solar eclipse of August 21, 2017 ("Great American Eclipse"); North Korea tests a ser ...

References

External links

*
Portuguese League profile
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Rui Pedro 1998 births Living people People from Castelo de Paiva Portuguese men's footballers Footballers from Aveiro District Men's association football wingers Men's association football forwards Primeira Liga players Liga Portugal 2 players Padroense F.C. players FC Porto B players FC Porto players Boavista F.C. players Varzim S.C. players Leixões S.C. players F.C. Penafiel players Segunda División B players Club Recreativo Granada players Slovenian PrvaLiga players NK Olimpija Ljubljana (2005) players Süper Lig players Hatayspor footballers Portugal men's youth international footballers Portuguese expatriate men's footballers Expatriate men's footballers in Spain Expatriate men's footballers in Slovenia Expatriate men's footballers in Turkey Portuguese expatriate sportspeople in Spain Portuguese expatriate sportspeople in Slovenia Portuguese expatriate sportspeople in Turkey