Osvaldo

Osvaldo stands out on any teamsheet at 169 centimetres, but at Vitória the height gap has never mattered when he goes past a marker on the edge of the box. In the 2024 Copa do Nordeste semi-final against ABC, he scored twice, including a bicycle kick, as Vitória won 6-2.

He came through at Fortaleza, his hometown club in Ceará, before a loan spell at River (PI) took him away from the Pici district for the first time. A move to the United Arab Emirates followed, joining Shabab Al-Ahli, with a loan back in Europe at Braga along the way. São Paulo bought half of his rights in 2012 for 4.6 million reais, and three years later Saudi club Al-Ahli paid 1.8 million euros to take him to the Middle East again.

Fluminense, Sport Recife, a return to Fortaleza, a spell in Thailand with Buriram United and a season at CSA filled out the years that followed, before he joined Vitória in 2023. Fortaleza remained the club he kept coming back to, wearing its shirt across three separate spells between 2006 and 2021.

The two caps he won for Brazil, against Bolivia and Chile in April 2013, sit alongside a longer list of domestic honours: state championship titles with River, Ceará and Fortaleza, a Copa Sudamericana with São Paulo, a Saudi Cup with Al-Ahli, and league titles with Fluminense and Buriram United. At Vitória he added a Brazilian Série B title in 2023 and the Bahia state championship in 2024, a season in which he finished as the competition's joint top scorer with five goals.

In September 2024, Osvaldo was hospitalised at the Hospital São Rafael in Salvador with a pulmonary embolism, which he said followed a blow to his leg that caused swelling and a blood clot. He spent time in intensive care and did not return to training until January 2025.