Pedro Miguel de Castro Brandão Costa (born 21 November 1981) is a Portuguese retired 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 lea ...

who played mainly as a

right-back In the sport of association football, a defender is an outfield player whose primary role is to stop attacks during the game and prevent the opposition from scoring. Defenders fall into four main categories: centre-backs, full-backs, sweepers ...

Club career

Costa was born in Arouca,

Aveiro District Aveiro District (, ) 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 Porto District to the north, ...

. A product of Boavista's youth system that still appeared with modest Gondomar and Famalicão in his early years as a senior, he joined

Primeira Liga The Primeira Liga (), also known as Liga Portugal Betclic for sponsorship reasons, is a professional association football league in Portugal and the highest level of the Portuguese football league system. Organised and supervised by the Liga ...

club

Braga Braga (; ) is a cities of Portugal, city and a Municipalities of Portugal, municipality, capital of the northwestern Portugal, Portuguese Braga (district), district of Braga and of the historical and cultural Minho Province. Braga Municipality ...

in the 2002–03 campaign. He made his first-team debut on 26 April 2003, featuring the full 90 minutes in a 1–3 home loss against

S.L. 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'', Benfica is one of the " ...

. After only 37 league appearances for Braga over five seasons – he was also regularly utilised by the reserves in the third division during his stint – Costa moved to

Associação Académica de Coimbra The Associação Académica de Coimbra (AAC) is the students' union of the University of Coimbra (UC). Founded in Coimbra on November 3, 1887, it is the oldest students' union in Portugal. It is also the biggest Portuguese students' union belongin ...

for the 2007–08 season. Again mainly used as a backup with the ''Students'', he appeared on both sides of the defensive sector when called upon, playing a career-best with the professionals 22 games in his

second year The second (symbol: s) is a unit of time derived from the division of the day first into 24 hours, then to 60 minutes, and finally to 60 seconds each (24 × 60 × 60 = 86400). The current and formal definition in the International System of ...

as the team finished in seventh position. In June 2011, after having appeared in 11 league matches in the season (13 overall), 30-year-old Costa left Académica and signed for

F.C. Arouca Futebol Clube de Arouca () is a professional Association football, football club based in the Porto metropolitan area. Founded in 1951, the club plays in the Primeira Liga, holding home games at Estádio Municipal de Arouca, with a 5,600-seat capac ...

in the Segunda Liga, where he started playing football as a youngster.

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* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Costa, Pedro 1981 births Living people Portuguese men's footballers Footballers from Aveiro District Men's association football fullbacks Primeira Liga players Liga Portugal 2 players Segunda Divisão players Boavista F.C. players Gondomar S.C. players F.C. Famalicão players S.C. Braga B players S.C. Braga players Académica de Coimbra (football) players F.C. Arouca players Portugal men's youth international footballers 21st-century Portuguese sportsmen