Mexico's next superstar: Giovanni dos Santos

His impressive skills keep catching the attention of football people all over the world, just last monday an article about him was featured in FIFA's official web site (fifa.com), it was one of the main articles and it still can be found wednesday in the main page of the web site.

The article is called "Giovanni Dos Santos, out to conquer the world" , and here it is:

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These are exciting and rather busy times for Giovani dos Santos. Having just performed in a mini club world championship with his side Barcelona, the Mexican is preparing for the FIFA U-17 World Championship Peru 2005.
Facing Mexico in Group B of the 16-team competition are Australia, Uruguay and Turkey with El Tri kicking off their campaign against the South Americans on 16 September in Lima. They stay in the Peruvian capital to tackle the Australians three days later before rounding off the group phase against the Turks.

Giovani sees that last game as the toughest: "I think Turkey will be our hardest rival as European sides are always difficult to beat," the 16-year-old tells FIFA.com. "Uruguay are strong too but they are more of a hardworking side."

Mexico have never gone beyond the quarter-finals in the competition and Giovani says the team are in the mood to turn history on its head: "Our aim is to put a good run together and we could make the semis or even the final."

Blocking their route to the latter stages are some formidable opponents, however. "European sides like Holland and Italy will be there of course, and then there's Brazil, who are always strong," says dos Santos.

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Brazilian blood
Giovani could just as easily be pulling on the famous green and yellow jersey in Peru. The talented attacking midfielder is the son of Brazilian striker Zizinho, who plied his trade in Mexico in the 70s and 80s, but the youngster never had any doubts about playing for the country of his birth: "I'm Mexican and it's a great honour to play for the national side," he explains.

He joined up with his team-mates for the first time a few months ago and hit it off with them straightaway.

"I feel really relaxed with them and am looking forward to the World Championship," he says enthusiastically. "I don't know when I'll be joining up with the squad, though, probably in a couple of weeks."

Giovani was recently in Spain for a mini club world championship that pit Barcelona against the likes of Real Madrid, Corinthians of Brazil, Anderlecht of Belgium, Porto of Portugal, Boca Juniors of Argentina and Pumas of Mexico.

"I wanted to show how well I can play and then put in some good performances in Peru. Maybe then I can cement my place with both Barcelona and Mexico," he adds excitedly.

At Barcelona Giovani's looks and style of play have led to inevitable comparisons with Ronaldinho, much to his delight: "It's great to be compared to him as he's the best player in the world," he says.

However, the Brazilian wizard is not his only inspiration: there is also Argentine playmaker Lionel Messi, Giovani's team-mate until last season, who has forced his way into the Barcelona first team and has just been called up by José Pekerman to the senior side at the tender age of 18.

"He's a good friend and a great example for me. He's shown that if you play well you can progress through the ranks and that's what I aim to do too," says a hopeful Dos Santos. A good showing in Peru and who knows, perhaps Giovani will join his two role models as one of the brightest stars in the football firmament.

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But the article is only a glimpse of all the hype that is around this kid, and is not only because he's a Ronaldinho look a like, experts all over Europe already talk about him as one of the best U 17 players in the world and the most promising player in Barcelona's development teams.

For starters Giovanni signed a few months a go a contract to be endorsed by Nike (as well as his little brother Jonathan, also a mexican midfielder for Barça's youth teams), as you know Nike is well known for signing world's sports superstars from an early age.

Also in a recent article for the spanish newspaper "El Mundo Deportivo", they featured the three current playmakers of the FC Barcelona first division, in it they talk about Giuly, Ronaldinho and Messi, at the end of the article they mention; "Lionel Messi represents the future of Barcelona, because he can make a difference on the team, but write down another name; Giovanni Dos Santos, he's not brazilian, he's mexican, and is only 15 years old (note; now he's 16), there's no doubt that Ronaldinho sets school"

In one of the tournaments were he played he scored a great goal against a young team of Man United and took his team to the championship, and was praised by experts all over Europe for that.

Now you can say that he's in the same fast track path to the first team that took his former teammate Lionel Messi from Juvenil A to the first team in less than a year, until now Giovanni plays in the Juvenil A (were he became friend of Messi) and it was recently tested in a friendly game of the second division franchise of Barcelona, the FC Barcelona "B" (were the mexican Santiago Fernandez plays) he played against Cornella, they lost the match 1-0 but Giovanni was a starter and played 70 minutes. Although his team lost the press praised Giovanni and said he was the best offensive player of the team.

Now wait and see how he takes the Mexican NT to the U17 WC in Peru.

 

Re: Mexico's next superstar: Israel Lopez

Thanks Hugo!

And yes, I didn't noticed that there were other threads about Giovanni until today right before I checked in today.

As for Santiago, thanks for the tip, I had no idea.

Well thanks again and see you around.