Richard Porta finished the recent Uruguayan Apertura season with 18 goals in 15 games for River Plate (don't confuse them with the Argentine team of the same name). Who cares?Well, it turns out that the record-breaking 24 year-old was born in Australia. He left Sydney at the mature* age of 12 months (*if you go by how some big European clubs are recruiting their academy kids these days) for Uruguay and has never returned.
He's been called up twice to domestic-based Uruguayan teams but has still not recieved a cap. Now Pim Verbeek comes along and finally, we have an Australian national team manager who declares interest in the lad.
Dukes doesn't seem to want to make the taxing plane trip back to Melbourne, Josh Kennedy is forever struggling with injuries and lack of form and it could be hard to pry Scott Mcdonald out of Gordon Strachan's loving arms. That leaves us with John Aloisi (fair enough, he's done well so far in the A-League), Archie Thompson and bla, bla, bla - The usual candidates. I think it might be time to go in a new direction.
Several European clubs are interested in Porta and if we cap him before Uruguay we could well have ourselves a gem of a player as well as some much needed squad depth. Uruguay and Australia's next games both happen to be on the same date: February 6th, 2008. Uruguay take on Colombia whilst the Socceroos battle Qatar in Melbourne. We need to act fast and ensure that Porta becomes an Australian player.
If he does play against Qatar, both sides will have a Uruguayan up front with Qatar's star striker Sebastian Soria being born there.
Here are some of Porta's goals in the Uruguayan league to wet your beak a little:
(He scores the 1st, 2nd, 4th and 5th goal in the first game)
Credit to Murray from Green and Gold Army for the video.
2 comments:
Did pim really expressed interest? (should link in the article mate), any idea what the kid thinks about playing for Australia? its probably better for him to play for Uruguay, more exposure (or maybe not this days world is changing).
Maybe MVFC could bring him here Uruguay's River are a small team how expensive would it be?
Thew commentator in the video calls him "el canguro" :) (Spanish for Kangaroo of course)
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