João Ricardo

Fortaleza signed João Ricardo on a free transfer in January 2023, after his contract at Ceará had run out. What began as a deal through the end of 2024 was extended in February 2024, tying him to the club until 2027: state titles with Fortaleza in 2023 and 2026, and the Copa do Nordeste in 2024, a campaign in which he played a decisive part in the penalty shootout that beat CRB in the final.

Born in Mariano Moro, in Rio Grande do Sul, the goalkeeper turned professional in 2008 at Concórdia and spent more than a decade moving through Brazilian football's lower tiers and provincial clubs — Brusque, Goiânia, Marcílio Dias, Rio Branco, Paysandu, Veranópolis, Icasa, Paraná — before a move to América-MG in 2014 gave his career its first real shape. There, he won the Minas Gerais state championship in 2016 and, a year later, Série B.

His best form came at Chapecoense, where he arrived in 2019 — well after the 2016 air disaster that devastated the club, which he had no part in. In 2020 he helped Chapecoense win Série B again, and his goalkeeping that season set a record for the meanest defence in the competition's history under its play-off format, conceding just 21 goals in 38 matches. That year, by his own account, marked the peak of his career to date. A doping suspension interrupted his time in Chapecó, handed down in April 2019 after a positive test following a Copa do Brasil match.

Two seasons at Ceará followed before Fortaleza came calling. João Ricardo has never been capped by Brazil at any level.