Top scorer in Serie B goes from Sampaio Corrêa to Grupo City – 01/17/2023 – Sport

Top scorer in the last Series B of the Brazilian Championship, with 19 goals, striker Gabriel Poveda, 24, will have Bolivian football as his destination this season. Name speculated in several Serie A teams, he was loaned by Alverca, from Portugal, to Grupo City and will wear Bolívar’s shirt in 2023.

“I’m going to a club that has an excellent project and structure. My objective, of course, is to maintain the great season I had, to continue scoring many goals”, he told Sheet. “Bolívar is always in the Libertadores, and that also seduced me. I’m excited for what’s to come and I want to make it happen.”

Classified to the Libertadores group stage, the La Paz team belongs to the powerful international conglomerate linked to the royalty of the United Arab Emirates. The organization has 12 clubs, with Manchester City being the main one. The most recent acquisition was Bahia, which sold 90% of SAF (Sociedade Anônima do Futebol) to the group in December.

Poveda’s loan runs until December, with mandatory acquisition in case of goals achieved. The player has extended his contract with the Portuguese club for one year, until June 2024. And he can dream of bigger leaps in international football if he maintains the good and surprising level.

Poveda was almost unknown when he was announced by Sampaio Corrêa, from Maranhão, on January 7 last year.

He arrived at the northeastern club only as the 15th reinforcement for the season – the ninth option only for the attack of a squad that already had Ronan, Thiago André, Luiz Paulo, Pimentinha, Erivelton, Eron and Valber Jr.

The most recent credentials were not encouraging: only 13 games for Brasil-RS in 2021 and not a single goal scored, a performance hampered by the slow recovery of a serious ligament injury to the right knee, suffered the previous year.

Almost a year after the announcement, surrounded by doubts, he finished the competition as the main scorer with 19 goals. It was the best mark since 2015, when Zé Carlos obtained the same number with CRB from Alagoas.

“2021 was difficult, it ended with Brazil’s relegation from Pelotas. I asked myself: ‘Where am I going now?’.”

At the end of 2018, the relationship with Alverca, a club with which he was negotiated by Guarani for R$ 1.5 million, emerged.

Before the deal with Grupo City, he accumulated loans with passages at Athletico Paranaense, Juventude and, more recently, Brasil de Pelotas.

Born in Araçatuba, the top scorer in Série B and responsible for 26 goals in 52 games during the season, an average of one goal every two matches played, he started his career relatively late in football, at the age of 17.

In 2023, he finished as the country’s sixth top scorer of the season, behind only five Serie A players: Germán Cano (44 goals), from Fluminense, Gabriel Barbosa (29) and Pedro (29), from Flamengo, Hulk (29 ), from Atlético Mineiro, and Jonathan Calleri (27), from São Paulo.

Approved in a test at Ituano in 2014, he was waiting for a contact from the club in the interior of São Paulo at the beginning of the following year, which never arrived.

Forgotten, he opted for a new test, this time in Guarani, to compose the under-17 team. He passed, and as fate would have it, he was hastily selected by the new club for a match against Ituano himself, due to documentation problems with his teammates. The team won 3-2, with a goal from him.

The following year, he would still finish the under-20 State as the main scorer of the competition, with 22 goals, in a competition in which he faced Éder Militão, then in São Paulo, who was in the last World Cup.

The good performance at Guarani aroused the interest of Internacional. In the South, he understood that it would be necessary to run to compensate for the lack of tactical knowledge.

“I really felt the absence of grassroots work at Inter. Fábio [Matias, treinador] I passed things on the tactical board that, at first, I had no idea how to execute. He was one of the coaches who helped me to compensate for this difficulty. We did not only tactical work but also coordination, mobility, technical gestures for heading, kicking… Today it is a problem overcome “, he reported.

Poveda had timid passages through Curitiba and Caxias in the South until arriving in Pelotas, in 2020, the year in which he won his longest streak as a professional. The good moment, however, was abruptly interrupted by a serious injury.

The bid took place in a match against Cuiabá, won by 3-0, on November 7, 2020, for the 20th round of Série B.

The striker came on in the 32nd minute of the second half, but left the field complaining of a knee problem after playing with defender Luiz Gustavo.

After taking a Sunday off, he took exams on Monday and went to the club’s training center. He was quoted to start as a starter in the next match, against Ponte Preta.

“My knee did not swell, there was nothing to indicate a serious injury. The director of football asked me: ‘Can I go to the game?’ I said yes. Hours later, the physiotherapist arrived and asked me to go to the doctor’s office”, he recalled.

Even suspicious of the possible diagnosis of a more serious injury, the striker says he was surprised to be informed of the partial rupture of the ligaments. “I got in my car and all I could do was cry. The family was essential in getting me on my feet.”

The treatment was carried out close to his family, in Campinas, until he returned to the pitch on September 18, in a 2-1 defeat against Goiás. The team, however, would end up in last place, with only four wins in 38 rounds.

The year of the turnaround for the player was a test of patience and built mainly from the second half: he scored six goals in the last ten games played in the 2022 Série B. Sampaio finished in fifth place, one position away from access.

Definitely recovered, Poveda tries to surprise again. Now, he will have the first Libertadores of his career as motivation. And the possibility of impressing the powerful City Group for new leaps.