Fat Footballers: Felipe Monteiro Diogo a.k.a. Sodinha

Felipe Monteiro Diogo, a.k.a “Sodinha” is an offensive midfielder who hasn’t had a very lucky career so far, despite having great technical skills, and he isn’t still very famous at international level.
He was born in Brazil in 1988, in Jundiaí, a city, situated in Sao Paulo Federal State, that counts about 350.000 inhabitants, and started playing football in the youth teams of Paulista Futebol Clube, a club from his city.
When he was 18, he was signed from Udinese, a team from Italian Serie A that every year is used to buy several South American and African players, and to loan them out to other teams, in order to make them grow up, but was brought to Italy just in 2008, when he was 20. Anyway Sodinha has never played for Udinese, that loaned him out to four different clubs from July 2008 to June 2010: Bari (Serie B), Paganese (Lega Pro Prima Divisione, the third tier of Italian football), Portogruaro (Lega Pro Prima Divisione) and Triestina (Lega Pro Prima Divisione), but he played just 18 matches in two years because of annoying injuries.
In June 2010 Udinese released him, and Sodinha had been forced to stop playing football for one years and an half by injuries, and during this period of inactivity his weight increased a lot !
In 2012 he came back to Brazil, and was signed by Cearà Sporting Club, a club from Brazilian Serie B, but unluckly some injuries affected his performances again.

But finally in July 2012 there’s turning point in his career: Alessandro Calori, a former defender of Brescia, Venezia and Perugia, who had managed the Brazilian when he was playing for Portogruaro, became the new manager of Brescia, an Italian Serie B team that he had captained in the 90s when he still was a footballer, and, remembering the Sodinha’s great technical skills, advised his Chairman, Luigi Corioni, to give hima trial.
Despite being 88 Kg and 1,75 m tall, Mr. Calori and Mr. Corioni were so impressed by the Brazilian that they decided to buy him just after the first training.

Currently Sodinha, who lost a bit of weight, not so much to be honest, is a key player of Brescia and one of the most interesting players in Serie B.

At the end of the post you can find a video where you can enjoy his class !