Pauleta arrives at the top

When compared to the likes of Michael Owen, Iker Casillas and Raúl González, 30-year-old Pedro Miguel Carreiro Resendes, or simply Pauleta, is a late developer.

Whereas Owen shone as an 18-year-old at France '98, the same age that Casillas had already appeared in, and won, two European Cup finals, while his captain at Real Madrid, Raúl, is apparently only 26 and yet seems to have been around on the world stage forever, Pauleta has taken a slightly different road to the top.

Perhaps one of the reasons it has taken the striker so long to get noticed, at home as well as abroad, is that he has never played for one of Portugal’s big three clubs, Benfica, Sporting or Porto. In fact, he has not even featured in the Portuguese first division during his eight years to date as a professional, having been rejected by Porto as a 16-year-old.

Not only that, but Pauleta was not a member of his countries’ fabled youth academy that produced the golden generation of Luís Figo, Rui Costa and co., and although he made his Portugal debut on 20 August 1997, the first player from the Azores to do so, it was another eighteen months before his first start in international football.

James Beattie, Kevin Phillips, Russell Hoult, Chris Sutton and others before them in this country have often argued about the lack of opportunities afforded them on the international stage due to the clubs they represent, a notion Pauleta, playing with Salamanca inthe Spanish second division at the time, could empathise with.

And yet, for all the artistry and invention that the likes of Figo, Rui Costa et al. produced on the field of play during the 1990s, Portugal were always more notable for their lack of an end product.

Various national coaches down the years, including current Madrid manager Carlos Queiroz, tried to coax goals out of the likes of João Pinto, Ricardo Sa Pinto and Nuno Gomes, without any front man ever really convincing.

What the team needed was what Arsène Wenger calls "a fox in the box", an out-and-out goal-poacher to get on the end of the golden generation’s dazzling approach play. And, at Euro 2000, that failing ultimately cost Portugal the chance to be crowned kings of Europe.

Pauleta made just the one appearance in the Low Countries four years ago, a 3-0 win over Germany, as Portugal were controversially eliminated at the semi-final stage by eventual winners France, but three months later came the breakthrough he had been waiting for.

The striker had made a tough decision that summer, opting to leave behind the chance to play in the European Cup with Deportivo La Coruña, who he had just won La Liga with, to join Bordeaux in the comparatively low-key French first division.

Thirty-three goals in 92 games for the Galicians, including eight from 12 starts in their title-winning campaign, had made those in Iberia sit up and take notice of his striking talents, but Pauleta did not like coach Javier Irureta’s favoured rotation policy, or the fact that he lay behind Roy Makaay in the team’s forward pecking order.

However, his move to Le Championnat proved beneficial to everyone concerned - Bordeaux, Portugal and most importantly of all, the player himself. Erstwhile national team coach António Oliveira once admitted that Pauleta "has been something of a poor relation in the squad," but all that was about to change.

Every footballer has a moment that they look back on as being defining in their career, whether it be Owen’s slalom run and goal against Argentina during France '98, Gordon Banks’s save from Pelé at Mexico '70 or Paul Gascoigne’s reckless lunge at Gary Charles in the 1991 FA Cup final.

For Pauleta it came as a mature 27-year-old in Portugal’s stunning 2-0 success over the Netherlands in Rotterdam during qualification for the 2002 World Cup, a game in which he scored one, and created another, to help propel the visitors to Korea/Japan at the expense of their hosts.

Indeed the ‘Birdman’, as is his moniker, went on to hit eight goals in ten qualifying games and despite his country enduring a desperately disappointing time of it in the Far East, Pauleta actually emerged from the tournament as the only Portugal international with his reputation enhanced, having netted a hat-trick against Poland in the team’s only victory of the finals.

As a result, Pauleta is the now man the whole of Portugal, who are hosting Euro 2004, are relying upon to score the goals that will enable their golden generation to sign off from international football in perfect style this summer.

In many ways, he is seen as being the missing piece in the Portuguese jigsaw. Too much pressure on one man’s shoulders? Maybe for the young Pauleta, but not for the new, improved version.

"Since I was very young I have thought only of scoring," says the forward with a strike rate of better than one every other game for his country (27 in 52), a phenomenal record in international football, while in three seasons with Bordeaux he netted 65 times in 98 leagues games, during which time he was also voted French Player of the Year twice in succession. And, since moving to Paris-Saint Germain for £8m last summer, Pauleta has already found the target ten times in Ligue 1.

In fact, all of the forward’s coaches agree as to what qualities make the player such a feared marksman. Oliveira says: "He is a player with a striker's instinct and a real fighter," while Ellie Baup, Pauleta’s manager at Bordeaux when he was joint-top scorer in France two years ago, describes him as "a fox on the pitch who likes to put the ball in the net." And his new coach in the French capital, Vahid Halihodžic, calls him "one of the best players in France - a fighter, very strong and completely unpredictable."

So at the brand-new Algarve stadium in Faro Loulé on Wednesday evening, England’s defence had better keep an eye out for the ‘Birdman’.