Heurelho Gomes has found a new employer. And that is quite remarkable, since the forty-year-old former goalkeeper of PSV, among others, had already put away his goalkeeper gloves. The Brazilian made his last official match on behalf of Watford against Everton in the battle for the EFL Cup on October 29, 2019 and decided to end his career as a professional footballer last summer. Despite this, Brazil’s Democratica FC has managed to persuade the keeper to temporarily end his retirement.
Democrata is a club from the city of Sete Lagoas. The club announced the return of Gomes on Thursday, after the goalkeeper disappeared from football for almost a year. Gomes, who played in the youth academy at Democratica, was under contract with Tottenham Hotspur after PSV and was loaned out to TSG Hoffenheim for one season, to end his career at Watford. Also, Gomes was part of the Brazilian national team during the 2010 World Cup, where he ultimately did not play. The top keeper has been between the posts for his native country 11 times, winning the Confederations Cup in 2005 and 2009.
However, Gomes had his best time as a goalkeeper at PSV, where he won the league title in the Eredivisie four times in a row between 2004 and 2008. He also won the KNVB Cup with the Eindhoven team in the 2004/05 season. Statistically, Gomes kept his goal clean in the Eredivisie in sixty percent of the matches at PSV, a statistic that no goalkeeper could match. He also played an important role in reaching the semi-finals of the Champions League in 2005 and was one of the crowd favorites of the PSV supporters.
The Telegraph reported in April last year that PSV had a function in mind for the closing post that wore the shirt of the Eindhoven club for four seasons. Gomes himself indicated at the time via the official PSV club channel that he was open to a return to Eindhoven, but to date there has been no return. Technical manager John de Jong has worked with Gomes in the past, who, like Carlos Salcido, could act as an ambassador in Brazil. Salcido hopes to further expand the PSV stronghold in Mexico in this way.
Earlier, Gomes also expressed the hope of expanding the Brazilian contingent at PSV in the long term. At the Eindhoven club, only Mauro Júnior and Luis Felipe are currently under contract and if it is up to the ex-PSV player, that will change in the not too distant future. Gomes worked for some time as an agent and in that capacity he saw the necessary Brazilian talents passing by that could be interesting for the Eredivisie. Now that he’s putting on his gloves again, that ambition will probably be put on the back burner.
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