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Who is Paulinho? There are many Brazilians named Paulinho, but the one I’m going to talk about in this blog is José·Paulo·Bezerra·Maciel·Júnior, who is now a player at FC Barcelona.
To Chinese soccer fans, Paulinho is a big star now, but not in the past. Although he had an unhappy experience in Tottenham Hotspur, where he was transferred to Guangzhou Ever Grande. At the time when he transferred, fans of Tottenham Hotspur even celebrated, because they finally let such a “bad player” go away. Likewise, fans of Guangzhou Evergrande cast doubt on his ability. However, in the 1/4 final game of AFC Cup, Guangzhou Evergrande VS Kashiwa Reysol FC, Paulinho gained his fame by a marvelous freekick. 30 m from the goal, he kicked out the ball like a canon, and the ball made a weird curve in the air——all players thought it was going to fly out of base lines——, dropping into the goal finally. The goalkeeper did nothing but stood still, even didn’t move a little bit.
After that game, Paulinho got more and more attention. In 2015’s AFC cup, he helped Guangzhou Evergrande won the championship, which qualified this team to enter FIFA Club World Cup. At Club World Cup, he performed even better. On Dec 13th, Guangzhou Evergrande confronted Club de Futbol América, one of the greatest teams in northern America. It was Paulinho’s goal at the 89th min that helped Guangzhou Evergrande defeated Futbol América by 2:1. Then came his tipping point in his life, the 1/2 final of Club World Cup, Guangzhou Evergrande VS FC Barcelona. Although Guangzhou was apparently much weaker than Barcelona, Paulinho was considered as the only Guangzhou player who displayed the same level as Barca players. After the end of the game, Messi had a brief conversation with him and said, “You did a good job. Do you wanna come to Barcelona?” Then, in 2017, Paulinho transferred to FC Barcelona at a price of 4 million Euros., which set a new record in Chinese soccer history, for this is the first time that a European top-level team had got a player from Chinese soccer league. Since then, Paulinho has been considered as a legend by Chinese soccer fans. Speaking of him, they usually say proudly: he comes from CSL!
But on the other hand, Barcelona fans’ view on Paulinho is different. Although in some games, Paulinho created good chances and even scored game-killing goals, his shortage is very apparent: he doesn’t have good skills of traditional Barcelona players. He always loses ball from his foot. After the UEFA Championship game yesterday, Chelsea VS Barcelona, Spanish soccer media criticized Paulinho as “nightmare performance” Facing world-level team, Paulinho’s shortage has always been “amplified”, which is so deadly for Barcelona.
Paulinho is still a good player. However, if he wants to