Jefté’s year at Palmeiras: squad depth and attacking flair | OneFootball

Palmeiras’ 2025 season was a year of complete overhaul. On the left-back position, the club still hadn’t found a backup who could handle the job when Piquerez was unavailable. Neither Caio Paulista nor Vanderlan were performing well, so Verdão went to Scotland in search of a solution: the 21-year-old player with a difficult-to-pronounce name who has been surprising everyone. Jefté.

An Unusual Arrival

With the left-back position becoming increasingly hard to fill in football, Palmeiras had to think outside the box to bring in Jefté. The club needed to find a financially viable option who wasn’t a foreigner, so as not to take up a foreign player slot on the roster for a backup.

Because of this, Palmeiras went to Rangers in Scotland and brought in the left-back who came up through Fluminense’s youth system, but never played for their senior team. At Verdão, the player has only 13 appearances and was brought in as an option for Joaquín Piquerez, a regular in Abel Ferreira’s squad.

With a contract until mid-2030, Jefté is another Palmeiras signing with an eye on the future. Young, he is expected to remain an option behind Piquerez, but he has been surprising everyone with his offensive abilities. In the last match of the 2025 season, he provided a beautiful assist for Flaco López.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇧🇷 here.