Richard Almeida: "Gurban Gurbanov told me I had to accept this offer."

"I love Azerbaijan very much".

Idman.biz reports that this was said by former "Qarabagh" football player Richard Almeida in an interview with the Brazilian press.

The 36-year-old midfielder shared his memories of Azerbaijan. He stated that "Qarabagh" has an important place in his career: "When I came to Azerbaijan in 2012, the FIFA rules had not yet changed. If I'm not mistaken, it was possible to get citizenship after one year. After one year, I started to stand out in the league. But then, because the rules changed, I couldn't get citizenship. I had to play for four and a half years. If I had played for four years and continued until the middle of the fifth year, they could have started preparing the documents. Thankfully, this process was easy for me. One day, our head coach Gurban Gurbanov called me to his room and said that they wanted to grant you citizenship. What do you think? I think you should accept this offer, because here - not only in "Qarabagh", but everyone in the whole country loves you. That's why the process was easy. Because there were such people who supported me. I knew that I would be called to the national team one year after receiving citizenship. That's why I accepted the offer more easily. I have good memories of Azerbaijan. They accepted me easily there, made my dreams come true, gave me a chance to prove myself, and I reciprocated in the same way."

It should be noted that in February of this year, the Agdam representative parted ways with the midfielder. Richard Almeida continues his career at the Brazilian club "Primavera".

Aytaj Sahed
Idman.biz