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Dados de Rui Patricio |
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| Nome |
Rui Pedro dos Santos Patrício
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| Nascimento |
segunda-feira, 15 de Fevereiro de 19881988-02-15
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| Naturalidade |
Marrazes - Portugal
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| Posição |
Goalkeeper
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Rui Patricio has been with Sporting Clube de Portugal for a very long time. He was part of the very first batch of young players truly coming out of the Sporting Football Academy, that was created in 2002. He was then the Sporting Lisbon U15 goalkeeper of the team that won the national championship that year. That was the first of four consecutive national titles he conquered together with his team mates, and Rui Patricio was the first to reach the Sporting Lisbon senior team.
He was marked for a great future very early in his career, as he was generally regarded as having exceptional qualities. Nicknamed “Marrazes”, the place of his birth in central Portugal, he was a champion in all the youth leagues and he progressed very rapidly in his training years.
Fairly tall at 1,88m, he initially had problems with crosses and plucking the ball out of the air. However, he is a superb shot stopper, good with his hands and very strong when facing a striker one on one. He has proved to be as adept at defending penalty kicks as the former Sporting Lisbon goalkeeper Ricardo.
In 2006, and still a U19, he joined the Sporting Lisbon senior side as third goalkeeper. On 19th November, he made his debut against Maritimo in Madeira, and he immediately defended a penalty kick, thus assuring Sporting’s 1-0 victory.
That same season Rui Patricio was called to represent Portugal in the U20 national team, and he played the four games of the Canada World Cup, while the players of his generation were playing the U19 European Cup in Austria.
In 2007/08 Vladimir Stojkovic, was hired to replace Ricardo, and the manager Paulo Bento fell out with each other, and Rui Patricio became Sporting Lisbon’s first team goalkeeper at the age of 19.
In spite of some initial errors coming from his inexperience, the manager maintained confidence in the young athlete, who took his chance, evolving and gaining confidence. He helped win a Portuguese Cup and a Supercup, both in finals against FC Porto where he kept two clean sheets. He thus became the undisputed Sporting Clube de Portugal goalkeeper, and in 2008 he was awarded the Stromp Prize (a coveted yearly prize given by Sporting to his most distinguished athletes and personalities), in the category Revelation of the Year.
Rui Patricio was called by Luiz Filipe Scolari to the Euro 2008 (Austria/Switzerland), where he remained a unused substitute. In the 2008/09 season he became the first team goalkeeper of the U21 national team, and he was widely regarded as the natural replacement of Ricardo in the Portuguese national team. He was called several times by the national manager Carlos Queirós, but in the end he was not called to the South Africa 2010 World Cup.
He finally made his debut in the national team led by the manager Paulo Bento, when he replaced Eduardo at half time in the 17 November 2010 friendly game against the European and World champions Spain, in which Portugal won by 4-0.
In the beginning of the 2010/11 season, the new Sporting Lisbon manager Paulo Sérgio asked for a more experienced goalkeeper to be hired, also amidst rumours that Rui Patricio was coveted by several major European teams. Rui Patricio got the strong competition of the German international goalkeeper Timo Hildebrand. Unfazed, Rui Patricio responded by performing brilliantly game after game. He played all the league games, and he was unanimously considered to be the best player of a team that otherwise did poorly. This was when Manchester United was rumoured to be interested in acquiring his services.
In 2011 he was awarded with the Stromp Prize in the category Football Player of the Year, when he had already became the first goalkeeper of the Portuguese national team that qualified for the Poland/Ukraine 2012 European Cup.
To-mane 12h51min de 12 de Janeiro de 2009 (WET)