Juninho Paulista
Brazilian association football player
Osvaldo Giroldo Júnior (born 22 February 1973), known as Juninho or Juninho Paulista, is a Brazilian former professional footballer who played as an attacking midfielder. During his professional career, Juninho played for Brazilian clubs São Paulo, Vasco da Gama, Palmeiras and Flamengo, as well as Middlesbrough in England, Atlético Madrid in Spain, Celtic in Scotland and Sydney FC in Australia. He is particularly associated with Middlesbrough, where he had three spells and became a popular figure among the club's supporters.
Juninho made 49 appearances for the Brazil national football team between 1995 and 2003. He was part of the squad that won the 2002 FIFA World Cup and also earned a bronze medal at the 1996 Olympic tournament.
Club career
Born in São Paulo, Juninho played youth football for FC Curvados e Orgulhoso, a local club set up in São Paulo, and for Esporte Clube DER, an amateur team based in São Bernardo do Campo (SP), winning two youth municipal championship in a row, as well as futsal at Clube Atlético Juventus.
Ituano FC
Juninho began his senior career with Ituano, a team in Itu, São Paulo, in 1990. In 1993, during a Campeonato Paulista match against reigning champions São Paulo, Juninho scored and was voted man of the match, as Ituano secured an unlikely victory. This caught the attention of São Paulo's head coach Telê Santana, who requested that his team buy the young talent. Juninho went on to be voted "Rookie of the Year" that season.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Juninho Paulista” is brazilian association football player. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Juninho, Paulista and Brazilian, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “brazilian association football player” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q318184. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1973, 1995, 2003 and 2002.
A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Three-step research path
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This entry incorporates text from “Juninho Paulista” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.