"The LA Galaxy today completed the signing of Brazilian midfielder Alvaro Pires. The 23-year old has trained with the Galaxy for most of the preseason and started all six of the club’s preseason matches, playing 472 minutes in those games, collecting one assist and one caution. Pires, will travel to Colorado with the club today and is available for selection on Saturday night against the Rapids. Per league and team policy, details of the contract were not announced."
Does anybody have any background info on this guy? Where was he playing in Brazil? How did he end up trying out with the Galaxy?
Alvaro is in Early this morning we received the International Transfer Clearance for Alvaro Pires, meaning that he has officially been added to the roster and is eligible for selection on Saturday. In order to complete the signing of a player from a foreign club, teams must have a P-1 visa approved and completed, as well as the ITC from said player's last club. That came in today meaning that the deal could be completed, meaning that Alvaro will join the rest of the team in flying to Denver today.
Re: Alvaro is in Not sure how I feel about this. I liked what I saw of him during preseason, but I'll reserve my judgement after a run of a few regular season games. He's got talent, that's for sure. I just wonder if he's going to be this season's Kevin Harmse for us. *shudder* He's a pit bull, I'll give him that. He even looks a little like one too.
in a article earlier on, ives galarcep had said he was playing in russia for spartak nalckhik. their website is only in russian, therefore I'M not going to get any info out of it, but if perhaps there is someone on the board that reads russian, we could find something... he is listed in the lineup of players for SC Internacional of Brazil from 2005 it looks like. This is a very good club that won the FIFA world club championships... but.... i found a page: http://www2.uol.com.br/cbf/bid/ti2007.htm there are 52 tables on this page, he is table 46, sixth from the bottom... that shows him as a transfer from joinville esporte clube to spartak nalchik in 2007 joinville looks to be a brazilian serie C side. so he may have been loaned out from inter where he perhaps was not going to get any time to this other club. i'm just guessing right now...
I got my wife to check some of her russian websites on Pires. Not a lot out there on him. He was #55 with Spartak Nalchik. Nalchik is a city in southern Russia of about 250,000 people (size of pasadena or thereabouts) and their stadium holds about 15,000 people. Looks like Nalchik is approx 200 miles east of Sochi and the Black Sea at the base of some mountain range, much like Pasadena is. And with the Black Sea nearby, id bet its similar to southern California here. Anyhow, most of the websites searched on Pires come up like this... http://football.mts.qp7.ru/champ_info/tourney_clubs/spartak_nch/players/9210 http://www.rubin-kazan.ru/season/statistics/fc96c23a498c474bad843646ca5b00fb.html Lucky to find a picture of him at best, with no bio info. One site we found a report with him in it here... http://www.sportsdaily.ru/issue.aspx/623/18642 But said he was rather worthless during the 2007 campaign and didnt contribute much of anything. If you can read russian text you can try searching more: Альваро Пирес (Alavaro Pires) Энрике Алвес Пирес (Enrique Alvis Pires) Алвес Пирес биография (Alvis Pires biography) Alvis and Alavaro were the way his name was spelled in Russia.
According to Bravo the G's had been interested in signing him last year before he went to Russia but it just didn't pan out. I guess Russia didn't pan out either so we renewed our interest. Gotta say in preseason he looks like a huge improvement over what we had last season in his spot.
Let me be the first to say that I'm going to buy a Galaxy jersey from MLSNet Shop w/ "Энрике Алвес Пирес" on the back!!!
And let's be totally honest---we're just plain happy to have a Brazilian on the team, even if he is a C-leaguer. =) That's just how it is with the midfield prospects we were forced to field last year.
I think he should fill our needs. With an enforcer stealing the ball away from the team in the midfield, maybe our defense won't look so vulnerable on the counter
I thought he came from Inter in Porto Alegre whatever, good pick up though. EDIT: I just read the original rumor by Ives and he says he is "of" Brazillian power Internacional but that he last played with Spartak Nalchik. I guess it depends on the meaning of the word "of".
yeah, we could probably use someone that speaks portuguese to navigate the pages... i speak italian and some spanish, and i can understand some portuguese, but really grasping what they are saying is beyond me. however, Internacional is in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul..... he is linked with them in several sites back in 2005-2006. the one site I found showed him being traded from Joinville to Nalchik but when I looked through the Joinville site archives and pictures, I couldn't find him anywhere. I know Galaxy Steve has some access to these guys, maybe he could just ask and find out what his history is. and by the way.... who edited the Wiki page within a couple of hours to show him being signed by the G's? anyone here?
I'm watching the game at my friend Rafael's place. He's from Porto Alegre and Inter is his team - I'll try to get some answers