Player Analysis: João Pedro

Cagliari is a team that holds a unique place in the history of Italian football. The club from the island of Sardinia is the only team not from the mainland of Italy to have won the Serie A title, accomplishing that achievement in the 1969/70 season.   

Undoubtedly the talisman of that iconic squad was star striker Luigi Riva, who is Italy’s all-time goalscorer with 35 goals in 42 international matches, and he also has the most Serie A goals for Cagliari with 156. The player who is second on the latter list does not have the legendary status of Riva or have the high profile of other Isolani stars of the past but he is carving out his own piece of history with I Sardi.

João Pedro Geraldino dos Santos Galvão, or João Pedro for short, has been with Cagliari since 2014 and he discovered the career stability that he could not find at his previous clubs. After Week 7 of the 2021/22 Serie A season, the Brazilian has found the back of the net 62 times in the Italian league in 187 games. 

For the 29-year-old from Ipatinga in the state of Minas Gerais in Brazil, things looked promising early on. He had represented his country at Under-17 level at the South American U-17 Championship as well as the FIFA U-17 World Cup in 2009, playing alongside future senior internationals like Neymar, Casemiro, Alisson, and Philippe Coutinho.