Fernando Couto

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Personal information
Fernando Couto
Full name	Fernando Manuel Silva Couto
Date of birth	August 2, 1969 (age 37)
Place of birth	Espinho, Portugal
Height	184 cm
Playing position	Defender
Club information
Current club	Parma FC
Senior clubs¹
Years	Club	App (Gls)*
1987-1988 1988-1989 1989-1990 1990-1994 1994-1996 1996-1998 1998-2005 2005-	FC Porto FC Famalicão Académica de Coimbra O.A.F. FC Porto Parma AC FC Barcelona SS Lazio Parma FC	1 (0) 0 (0) ? (?) 106 (10) 39 (4) 45 (0) 145 (9) 23 (0)
National team
1990-2004	Portugal	110 (8)
¹ Senior club appearances and goals counted for the domestic league only. * Appearances (Goals)

Fernando Manuel Silva Couto, OIH (born 2 August 1969; pron. IPA: [fɨɾ'nɐ̃du 'kotu] or ['koutu]) is a Portuguese professional football player, who currently plays as a defender for Parma in the Italian Serie A championship. Couto has played in a number of top clubs in Portugal, Spain and Italy and he has won the national league title of each country, as well as the European UEFA Cup and UEFA Cup Winners' Cup trophies.

At the international level, he represented the Portugal national football team in 110 matches, and Couto took part in the 2002 FIFA World Cup as well as three European Championship tournaments. During his last matches with the Portuguese national team, at the 2004 European Championship (Euro 2004), he was selected as team captain.

1 Club career
2 International career
3 Honours
4 External links

[edit] Club career

Born in Espinho near Porto, Couto began his career with FC Porto. Following a few seasons at lower league clubs FC Famalicão and Académica de Coimbra O.A.F. he returned to FC Porto in 1990 with great success. In the following four seasons, he won three Portuguese SuperLiga titles with the club, before switching to the Italian Serie A, joining Parma A.C. in 1994. In his first season at Parma, the club enjoyed a run to the 1995 UEFA Cup final, where they narrowly defeated Juventus FC 2-1 on aggregate.

The talismanic stopper then joined Spanish club FC Barcelona in 1996, where his international teammate Luís Figo was also enjoying a purple patch. With the Catalan giants he picked up two Spanish Cups and his first UEFA Cup Winners' Cup medal, after a 1-0 win over Paris Saint Germain in the May 1997 final at Rotterdam, with Brazilian sensation Ronaldo scoring the winner. The following year, Barcelona reigned supreme in Spain, winning the The Double of domestic league and cup titles. Couto left the club on a high, and joined Roman club SS Lazio in July 1998.

His first title with the club was another UEFA Cup Winners' Cup triumph in the 1998-99 season, with victory over RCD Mallorca in the final at Villa Park in Birmingham. Then followed an impressive feat of another domestic double. With Swedish coach Sven-Göran Eriksson at the helm, Lazio gained ten points over Juventus FC in the last eight games of the season, to pip them to the title on the last day of Lazio's 1999-2000 centennary season.

The one blemish to his glittering record came in 2001 when he failed a doping test showing positive for the steroid nandrolone. Couto denied having taken forbidden substances, but his "b" test confirmed the finding and he eventually served four months out of a nine month worldwide ban for the offence.

[edit] International career

Following Portugal's win at the 1989 FIFA World Youth Championship for under-20 players, Couto and the other Portuguese winners were announced as the "golden generation" of Portuguese football. However, at the senior level, Couto and the Portuguese national team failed to qualify for both the 1994 and 1998 FIFA World Cup finals and the team surprised pundits and fans alike with a dire display at the 2002 FIFA World Cup, despite a multi-talented side.

The European Championships was a happier hunting ground for Couto and Portugal, with a run to the quarter-finals in Euro 1996 and a bitter semi-final defeat to the later winners from France in the Euro 2000 tournament. Even though Couto neared 34 years of age at the Euro 2004, his formidable partnership with fellow veteran Jorge Costa in Portugal's central defence saw him escape new coach Luiz Felipe Scolari's mass culling of the side that crashed out of the 2002 FIFA World Cup in the first round. Couto was selected the captain of the Portuguese national team at the Euro 2004, which was hosted on home grounds in Portugal, and he helped the "golden generation" reach their first major final. The team lost out 0-1 to Greece in the final game.

Couto ended his national team career following the Euro 2004 exit. He ended at level with Luís Figo as the most-capped player in Portuguese history, with 110 appearances for the national team, though Figo went on to play a further 17 national team games.

[edit] Honours

Domestic

Portuguese SuperLiga: 1988, 1992 and 1993 with FC Porto
Portuguese Cup: 1988, 1991 and 1994 with FC Porto
Spanish La Liga: 1998 with FC Barcelona
Spanish Cup: 1997 and 1998 with FC Barcelona
Italian Serie A: 2000 with SS Lazio
Italian Cup: 2000 and 2004 with SS Lazio

European

UEFA Cup: 1995 with Parma AC
UEFA Cup Winners' Cup: 1997 with FC Barcelona and 1999 with SS Lazio

International

FIFA World Youth Championship: 1989 with Portugal

[edit] External links

Parma FC profile (.pdf)
FootballDatabase career stats

	Portugal squad - 2000 European Football Championship Semi-finalists
1 Baía \| 2 J. Costa \| 3 Rui Jorge \| 4 Vidigal \| 5 F. Couto \| 6 Paulo Sousa \| 7 Figo \| 8 João Pinto \| 9 Sá Pinto \| 10 Rui Costa \| 11 S. Conceição \| 12 P. Espinha \| 13 Dimas \| 14 Abel Xavier \| 15 Costinha \| 16 Beto \| 17 P. Bento \| 18 Pauleta \| 19 Capucho \| 20 Secretário \| 21 Nuno Gomes \| 22 Quim \| Coach: Humberto Coelho

	Portugal squad - 2002 FIFA World Cup
1 Baía \| 2 J. Costa \| 3 Abel Xavier \| 4 Caneira \| 5 F. Couto \| 6 Paulo Sousa \| 7 Figo \| 8 João Pinto \| 9 Pauleta \| 10 Rui Costa \| 11 S. Conceição \| 12 H. Viana \| 13 J. Andrade \| 14 P. Barbosa \| 15 Nélson \| 16 Ricardo \| 17 P. Bento \| 18 Frechaut \| 19 Capucho \| 20 Petit \| 21 Nuno Gomes \| 22 Beto \| 23 Rui Jorge \| Coach: Oliveira

	Portugal squad - 2004 European Football Championship Runners-Up
1 Ricardo \| 2 P. Ferreira \| 3 Rui Jorge \| 4 J. Andrade \| 5 F. Couto \| 6 Costinha \| 7 Figo \| 8 Petit \| 9 Pauleta \| 10 Rui Costa \| 11 Simão \| 12 Quim \| 13 Miguel \| 14 N. Valente \| 15 Beto \| 16 R. Carvalho \| 17 C. Ronaldo \| 18 Maniche \| 19 Tiago \| 20 Deco \| 21 Nuno Gomes \| 22 Moreira \| 23 H. Postiga \| Coach: Scolari

Parma F.C. - Current Squad

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Fernando Couto

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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