Alessandro dos Santos

From Free net encyclopedia

Alessandro dos Santos, (Japanese: 三都主アレサンドロ, Santosu Aresandoro), born July 20, 1977 in Maringá Paraná, Brazil) usually known as Alex, is a Brazilian-born football player who acquired Japanese citizenship in November 2001 and played a prominent role in the Japanese national team in the 2002 FIFA World Cup.

He moved to Japan in his teenage years, playing for his high school team before first playing for the J-League team Shimizu S-Pulse in 1997. In 1999 he was named J-League Player of the Year, and his citizenship application was approved in a very rapid eight months in 2001.

Alex became the second foreign-born person to play for Japan in the World Cup finals after Wagner Lopes, also born in Brazil, who was an important player in Japan's 1998 World Cup squad. Previously, another Brazilian-born Japanese citizen, Ruy Ramos played in Japan's unsuccessful campaign to qualify for the 1994 finals [1].

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