New year, new atmosphere! This winter, Chinese Super League stalwart Beijing Guoan kept putting in signings in the transfer window, giving fans a vague glimpse of what the team will look like in 2019.
It can be said that Guoan is one of the fastest attracting reinforcements among all the clubs in the Chinese Super League this year. Currently, the club has signed two new foreigners, Brazilian back-rower De Sousa and Macedonian midfielder Ademi.
Looking at the resumes and past stats of these two newcomers, they can be considered as big name foreigners in the Premier League right now. However, German Sousa and Ademi have not made many appearances in the league this season.
In particular, 34-year-old Brazilian veteran de Sousa has only played 10 Turkish Super League matches for Besiktas in the 2022-23 season, with an attendance rate of less than 50%. This is mainly due to the fact that de Sousa has suffered three consecutive recurrences of an old knee injury in the past four months, which has caused him to miss a large number of Besiktas' matches, thus completely losing his place as the team's starter.
This was recently confirmed by reports in the Turkish media. The reports claimed that German-Sosa was abandoned by his coach due to an injury this season and therefore he decided to leave Besiktas. The team that German-Sosa wanted to join before was not Beijing Guoan, but his old employer Vasco da Gama who used to be in the Barclays Premier League.
De Sousa's agent reportedly communicated with Vasco da Gama soon after he decided to leave Besiktas and the two sides were infinitely close to signing. However, after assessing de Sousa's injuries and fitness, the da Gama club eventually dropped the contract with de Sousa. The club believed that de Sousa's knee was a serious problem and they were very concerned that de Sousa's body would no longer be able to adapt to the Barclays Premier League, where the level of confrontation is very high.
In this case, Germany - Sosa can only give up the return to the Barclays Premier League, choose to land in the Chinese Super League to join Beijing Guoan. On the one hand, this is because the level of the Chinese Super League is relatively low, and the requirements for players' physical and confrontational abilities are not as high as in Europe and America.
On the other hand, he is already very old. Even if clubs in other countries were willing to sign him, he would not pay too high a salary. Therefore, de Sousa had to give up the salary arrears of Besiktas FC and went to Beijing Guoan without hesitation.
A former Brazilian international, there is no doubt about de Souza's strength, but an old injury to his knee has seriously affected his playing form in the last two years. De Sousa reportedly suffered a serious knee injury and had several surgeries. Since the beginning of this year, he has missed a lot of training and matches for Besiktas due to his knee injury.
After joining Guoan, de Sousa's knee injury has become a huge hidden danger. Considering the level of Guoan's team doctors, if it recurs again, I am afraid that he will miss Guoan's matches for a long time. Li Ke and Hou Yongyong's constant injuries in the past two years are enough to illustrate this problem.
Therefore, we can only pray that de Sousa can stay healthy after landing in the Chinese Super League, otherwise the 34-year-old Brazilian veteran will undoubtedly become another foreign aid in the Chinese Super League "old age"...
