European Prospects

Brazil is getting more and more important concerning importing young players to Europe. Especially the Spanish teams are very active in recruiting talent from the country of Nene and Anderson Varejao.

In a recent post on his FIBA.com Blog, Gustavo Machado Cardoso reports the following.

Things are getting tougher and tougher for our clubs. European clubs continue to send our kids to the Old Continent at an early age. One of this week’s edition of newspaper O Estado de São Paulo published an article that revealed the interest of Real Madrid in 13 year old multi task player Dimitri Chatzicharalambous Sousa. His older brother already plays for Olympiakos in Greece.

As sources informed 14 year old Gabriel Aguirre, who played for Palmeiras last year, is already in Spain playing for Zaragoza. Rafael Luz and Augusto Lima, two other unripe , but amazing talents, are already succeeding in the EBA ranks playing for Unicaja’s secondary squad.

Talking about the first one, Dimitri Chatzicharalambous Sousa, I found this article where he is already put in relation with Dirk Nowitzki. Sousa is described there as being 1m91 tall and having already a 48 shoe size at the age of 13. He has already set some records as like scoring 61pts in just 18 minutes. Real Madrid contacted the family of Dimi in last December but they were not the first ones. Of course, PAO and Olympiacos knew already about his talent as his 17yr old brother Adonis is playing in Greece. Actually it looks like Madrid has the best chances to bring him over.

When it comes to Rafael Freire Luz, not later than yesterday, the Spanish website Basketdraft published an article with video footage about this 15year kid who is actually rocking some rims with the Unicaja Malaga youth sections. Luz is described there as a very interesting PG prospect with outstanding athletic abilities.

I don’t comment these moves, as I don’t know the players. But I let it up to you to make a choice what you think about recruiting younger and younger players.