How Soon is Signed?
By: Abby | December 19th, 2007
Reports are coming in that the long-awaited signing of the Brazilian Raffael (de Araujo) from Lulu’s ex-club FC Zurich is all but completed. It’s the financial agreements that still need to be worked out completely, but some sources (scroll down) are reporting that a payment plan has been worked out for the striker.
So who is Raffael?
A 22-year-old Brazilian from Fortaleza, he’s spent his entire European career in Switzerland. He started at FC Chiasso, in the Swiss second division, before moving to FC Zurich in 2005. According to the font of all knowledge (Wikipedia), he scored 30 goals in 61 appearances in Chiasso, and 27 goals in 62 appearances in Zurich. We’ve been after him since the summer, when Lulu came in to coach, and he’s been quoted lately saying how much he wants to come to Berlin. That says positive things about Lulu- his ex-players still want to play for him, even though Zurich is through to the next round of the UEFA Cup. 
He’s highly rated in Zurich and by whoever wrote his Wikipedia entry. I haven’t had much of a chance to actually see him in action- watching Hertha games is hard enough, much less Zurich ones, but he’s done any curious seekers a service by providing his own interestingly-soundtracked Youtube-esque vidoes on his interestingly-translated website (he’s destined for the Bundesliga already!). He definitely has some skills and a good eye for goal, although anything that can be said about taking Youtube clips with a grain of salt must be particularly kept in mind when it comes to the same sort of videos on a player’s website. Although what is particularly fabulous about the video section is the clips from Raffael’s childhood futsal games- adorable! So fingers crossed that the financial details get worked out, and that by the time the league starts up again we’ve got a shiny new Brazilian.
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Comments
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I think Hoeneß is telling everbody and their mom, that Hertha only has €3m available on purpose. Just to keep the price tags down. I think they could actually afford to pay more. But paying €3m now and the remaining millions later would be a way to finance him as well.
BTW: I guess you already know, but just to make sure: I’ve been toying around with the Internet TV services of some Bundesliga clubs in the past few months, to see what they offer/don’t offer. I came across the one by Hertha: http://www.herthatv.de/
Since their service is Windows only, I didn’t look into it in more detail. Though this service offers every Hertha match on demand (the full 90min) as well as match highlights for a monthly subscription fee. Some extra interviews and bonus material seems to be there as well. It’s all in German, though the German flag icon on the site might suggest, they plan to expand their service in the future(?), as it would otherwise be rather redundant. I don’t know whether this could be interesting. You’ll need a credit card for payment though and the dollar-euro exchange rate isn’t the best either.
Posted from
Germany
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The problem with me checking it out is the same with you checking it out- my beloved Kolo (in my non-Hertha time I’m an Arsenal fan) is a MacBook I got as a graduation present. Which is also the problem with those streaming sites that everyone else watches…
Hoeness is trying to be crafty, is he? Sneaky sneaky.
Posted from
United States -
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I’ve got Leopard. I need the copy of Windows. I’m not really sure I want to spend 100-some dollars on it, though…
Posted from
United States -
And then there are people like me, who are still working with a four year old Powerbook that doesn’t do Windows at all. Using silly Microsoft only technology is just too annoying.
Posted from
Germany
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