Luiz Gustavo Dias

When Luiz Gustavo left Bayern Munich for Wolfsburg in 2013, it read as a step down. What followed was a Champions League winner's medal already banked and years more of first-team football in Germany, a country where he spent the bulk of his career after arriving from Hoffenheim. The move set the pattern for the rest of his path: he rarely stayed anywhere long enough to be taken for granted, and he kept finding a starting shirt wherever he went next.

He started out in Brazilian football with Ipanema and Universal-AL before a loan spell took him to CRB, and from there to Hoffenheim in Germany, where the switch to Europe became permanent. Bayern signed him in 2011, and two years later he was a Champions League and Bundesliga champion. Wolfsburg brought a German Cup winner's medal in 2014/15, and a further move to Marseille produced a Europa League final appearance in 2017/18 and a place in Ligue 1's team of the season.

His career then took him further afield still, to Fenerbahçe in Turkey and Al-Nassr in Saudi Arabia, before he returned to Brazil with São Paulo. He now plays for Athletico Paranaense.

With the Brazil national team, Luiz Gustavo won the FIFA Confederations Cup in 2013 and reached the semi-finals of the 2014 World Cup on home soil, finishing fourth. He earned 41 caps and scored twice for his country between 2011 and 2016.