While Beijing Guoan's transfer ban has yet to be officially lifted, the club recently made a new foreign signing official in the form of former Brazilian international midfielder De Souza.
De Souza, 34, made his debut for Barclays Premier League powerhouse Vasco da Gama.In 2010, at the age of 21, De Souza landed in Europe, joining Portuguese supergiant Porto. Since then, he has also played for Gremio, São Paulo and other Barclays Premier League teams. Due to his outstanding performances in the league, de Souza was selected for the Brazilian national team in 2014.
In 2018, De Souza landed in Asia, joining Saudi giants Al Ahli before moving to Besiktas two seasons later. Having lost his main place in the team last season, De Souza decided to leave the team. Although he had a contract with the club, determined to leave, De Souza terminated his contract with Besiktas early and recently joined Guoan, signing a two-year deal with the club.
In order to join Guiao, De Souza paid a lot because he has a contract with Besiktas. If he wanted to move, he had to pay the club over €1 million in liquidated damages. Instead of paying the liquidated damages for de Souza, the Guoan club paid out of their own pockets.
In order to pay Besiktas a huge amount of liquidated damages, De Souza reportedly gave up most of his annual salary at the club this season. De Sousa's annual salary at Besiktas was reportedly 1.5 million euros, but due to the club's poor economic situation in the last two years, Besiktas owed De Sousa hundreds of thousands of euros in annual salary.
Not only did De Sousa not claim his outstanding wages from Besiktas, but he also waived all of his wages for the remainder of his contract, which added up to more than €1 million.
It can be said that De Sousa in order to transfer to the national security and suffered a considerable personal loss. In a sense, this can be regarded as his "surrender" to join Guoan.
Although De Souza is 34 years old and entering the final stages of his career, the Brazilian midfielder has continued to perform well over the past few seasons.
As a midfielder, De Souza has strong stealing and blocking ability, and his footwork and overall view are also very good, which can effectively connect the front and back of the team. In addition, De Souza also has a strong sense of breakthrough, often breaking through the opponent's penalty area and threatening the opponent's goal with long-distance shots.
It can be said that De Souza is a standard B2B midfielder, which is very similar to Guoan's midfield "thigh" foreign aid Augusto. If there are not too many injuries, he is fully capable of becoming the core of the midfield offense and defense, and become the "new pride" of Guoan.
Considering the serious decline in the overall level of the Chinese Super League and the fact that most clubs can't afford big-name foreigners, De Souza's strength can be the top midfielder in the new season of the Chinese Super League. As for the new core strength of Guoan's midfield, let's have a glimpse at the new working system
