João Coelho Neto, known more commonly as ''Preguinho'' (8 February 1905 – 1 October 1979) was a Brazilian

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 played as a striker. He was born in

Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro ( , , ; literally 'River of January'), or simply Rio, is the capital of the state of the same name, Brazil's third-most populous state, and the second-most populous city in Brazil, after São Paulo. Listed by the GaWC as a ...

. Son of Brazilian writer

Coelho Neto Henrique Maximiano Coelho Neto (February 21, 1864 – November 28, 1934) was a Brazilian writer and politician. He founded and occupied the second chair of the Brazilian Academy of Letters, from 1897 until his death in 1934. He was also the pr ...

, Preguinho was born on 8 February 1905. He played from 1925-1938 for

Fluminense Fluminense Football Club (), known as Fluminense, is a Brazilian sports club best known for its professional football team that competes in the Campeonato Brasileiro Série A, the first tier of Brazilian football and the Campeonato Carioca, th ...

and scored 184 goals. For

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

he participated in the 1930 FIFA World Cup and was the first captain of the Brazil national team, scoring the first goal ever from Brazil in a

FIFA World Cup The FIFA World Cup, often simply called the World Cup, is an international association football competition contested by the senior men's national teams of the members of the ' ( FIFA), the sport's global governing body. The tournament ha ...

in a match against

Yugoslavia Yugoslavia (; sh-Latn-Cyrl, separator=" / ", Jugoslavija, Југославија ; sl, Jugoslavija ; mk, Југославија ;; rup, Iugoslavia; hu, Jugoszlávia; rue, label=Pannonian Rusyn, Югославия, translit=Juhoslavija ...

, and two further goals in a match with Bolivia. He died at the age of 74 on 29 September 1979. In his honour, Fluminense dedicated a statue. A Brazilian TV-programme of his life was produced by Carlos Niemeyer for Canal 100 and directed by Carlos Leonam and Oswaldo Caldeira.

International goals

Brazil's goal tally first

References

1905 births 1930 FIFA World Cup players 1979 deaths Footballers from Rio de Janeiro (city) Brazilian men's footballers Men's association football forwards Brazil men's international footballers Fluminense FC players Brazilian people of indigenous peoples descent Brazilian people of Portuguese descent {{Brazil-footy-forward-1900s-stub