Good Article on Pauleta
Fall River, Mass., feels like home to Pedro Miguel Carreiro da Ponte Resendes. The many hundreds of people who greet him know him as Pauleta, the all-time leading scorer in Portugal’s national team history. Restaurants specialize in cuisine from his island, Sao Miguel. People speak in his Azorean dialect and remember how he commemorated goals by extending his arms like the goshawk, which gives the Azores their name.
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To this day I can’t make my mind up on Pauleta. On one hand if you need a player to score two goals in qualifying against Luxembourg he is your man but many still remember him as the player who didn’t get on the goal sheet in Euro 2004 and scored only once in the 2006 World Cup. He is still the answer to the trivia question which player is the last to score a World Cup hat trick as Pauleta put three past Poland in the 2002 World Cup however. Add the fact Pauleta never played in Portugal and it’s easy to see why people have differing opinions on his career.
Selfishly I’d like to see Pauleta play state side even at 35 years old he isn’t the type of player MLS needs. Even after he was pushed aside by PSG coach Paul Le Guen Pauleta was still PSG’s most consistence goal scorer last year and could still find the back of the net for any MLS team.