Danilo: Palmeiras' Rising Star in Midfield

Danilo has been making headlines recently for all the good reasons in Palmeiras. He’s been a regular in midfield for over a year now but what exactly makes him so good that at 20 he’s trusted so much to be the heart of midfield? He’s the youngest player in the starting XI of the side so how exactly did he make it? This article will dive right into that.

Born on 19th of April, 2001 in Salvador in the region of Bahia, Danilo dos Santos de Oliveira always had football in his heart. He started off young in the Bahia youth team but despite trying his best he was let go of at the age of 16.

Having nowhere else to turn to, he opted to join the much smaller youth setup of Jacuipense but left that too and enrolled in PFC Cajazeiras. It’s worth noting that Cajazeiras had only recently been created [2015] with the aim to become the 3rd best team in Bahian football.

Their first ever competition was the 2016 Copa Governador do Estado do Bahia, a regional championship which are quite common in Brazil, with this one in particular involving 8 smaller teams in the Bahian region.