Ricardo Oliveira

Ricardo Oliveira was born in São Paulo, Brazil’s south eastern state on May 6th 1980. He began his career at Portuguesa scoring 23 goals in 46 appearances for the club during 2000-2001 and 2001 – 2002 campaigns, before moving on to Santos Futebol Clube. Here, Oliveira scored 22 goals in 34 league appearances during the 2002-2003 campaign. It was after his short spell at Santos Futebol Clube when Oliveira made a move abroad and joined Spanish giants Valencia for the 2003-2004 campaign.

Oliveira scored 8 La Liga goals in 21 games including a memorable goal against FC Barcelona to help Valencia lift the La Liga trophy and the UEFA Cup trophy. It was after only his first season with the club that Oliveira joined La Liga rivals Real Betis. He netted 22 goals in 37 appearances including a goal in the Copa del Rey final against Osasuna in order to become La Liga’s highest goal scorer ahead of Seleção team mate Ronaldo. However, due to a knee injury against Chelsea in the Champions League, Oliveira made only 9 La Liga appearances in his second season for the Seville club, scoring a mere 4 goals. Betis loaned him out to São Paulo in 2006 to try and regain fitness and recover from injury.

Prolonged recovery time meant Oliveira never made the Brazilian World Cup team. Following his loan at São Paulo, Oliveira returned to Betis on August 21st, nine days later than his scheduled arrival which caused controversy amongst the Betis board. The culprit for this was a delay caused by an unplanned schedule change made by CONMEBOL, which postponed the Copa Libertadores final match by one week while his contract was expiring the day after the initially scheduled final. Oliveira wanted to play and tried to reach an agreement with Betis, even with a special allowance from FIFA, but Betis would not co-operate and Oliveira was not allowed to play in the biggest match of his career.

He was later fined €1.0 million for breach of contract, and was again fined for €3.0 million due to undergoing a medical for A.C. Milan without their authorization. Regardless, Oliveira signed for A.C. Milan on 31 August 2006 on a 5 year contract. Oliveira made 11 international appearances for Brazil and scored 4 goals.

Oliveira is a much lower-profile player compared to Shevckenko but he is not worried about that and says Serie A will soon see how good he is.

Fact File
Name: Ricardo Oliveira
Birth Place: São Paulo (BRAZIL)
Nationality: Brazilian
Birth Date: May 6th 1980
Height: 1.83m
Weight: 81 kg
Former Clubs: Portuguesa(BRAZIL), Santos(BRAZIL), Valencia(SPAIN),
Real Betis(SPAIN), São Paulo(BRAZIL)
Current Club: AC Milan(ITALY)

Honours
·La Liga – 2004 - Valencia
·Uefa Cup – 2004 - Valencia
·Copa Del Ray – 2005 – Real Betis
·Copa America – 2004 - Brazil
·Confederations Cup – 2005 – Brazil

This player profile was written by Anthony Singh Dosanjh. Some of the content might be outdated and it might lack events that followed the date it was written on. Contact us if you'd like to update this profile.