Tonel was first recommended by my friend to be put on this list; and I almost rejected it. The reason I did not want to have his name on the list is because of his age; he is 28.
After some persuasion by my friend to watch his games (which I did and was totally mesmerized) is then that I realized that I would have made a great mistake to not have his name up on this list.
It was actually Anderson Polga (Tonel’s defend partner at Sporting Lisbon) that was to be on this list but (as I watched his games) I was more attracted to Tonel’s game-play rather than the Brazilian’s.
Tonel is a composed, well-built, experienced, very reliable and a solid defender. Tonel scores a fairly amount of goal for a defender and he also tends to score acrobatic goals as well.
He is strong in the air, tackles really well, is great with the ball, and is also very good in reading the game.
He has previously played for Porto and more modest clubs like Maritimo and Academica, but with very little success. He then got his chance to join Sporting Lisbon after some impressive display for Maritimo, and he never looked back since.
To many people's surprise, he rarely gets a call up for the national team, even though he is one of the most consistent players in the Portuguese football league (actually only one cap to speak of).
His partnership with Polga has been one of the success stories for Sporting Lisbon. Even though the pundits say he is a late developer, I just think he was never given the chance to shine or to play on a more competitive team.
He is currently being tracked by Rangers and a few other clubs, but I would really like to see him in a more competitive league to show his true abilities. He is truly the one of the rare breed of defenders where you can depend on when the whole team is down.
Predicted club: Villarreal, Rangers, Newcastle, AS Roma and Werder Bremen
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