I watched some Giovanni highlight games and Santos/Barca/Brazil/Olympiacos all-goals comps over the last few days, and read up on his career a bit, as he's a player i couldn't remember too clearly. Mainly vague impressions he was a good, technical, supporting forward in his Barca partnerships with Ronaldo and Rivaldo...and that feud with Van Gaal that saw him leave, prompting his quite well known quote about Louis being "a Hitler for Brazilian players".
He's a bigger unit than i remembered ( 6'3) and has a really distinctive style. Like if Kluivert had started playing like a classic South American 10, with Pele flicks and chest control mixed in. Beautiful first touch and capable of great through balls and passes from deeper positions, though i had to watch through extended highlights to see them as his comps are filled with goals and some control/dribbling moments. Doesn't seem to have had a consistently threatening shot from outside the box like Rivaldo had in his skillset, but has his moments. Good variety of goals in the box and from deeper runs, good in the air, but not like his height might suggest. Surprisingly for a Brazilian attacking mid/forward of his kind, he's not a direct free kick specialist. Not fast, but looked hard to stop once he built up momentum.
It was interesting to read how well regarded he was by most Brazilian fans of that era at the time of his move to Barca, or still is in article/highlight comments. His 95 season where he was the key player in taking a quite weak Santos team to 2nd in the Brasileiro Serie A (controversial loss to botafogo in the 2 leg final) seems to be one of the individually legendary single seasons of that 90s/early 00s period, where the Brazilian was in its last era of being able to match the top European ones. It put him right up there with Rivaldo, Djalminha and Edmundo as top creative attacking stars in the league. Plenty of opinions in comments/articles that he was one of the most skilled of that generation; very few saying he was shit/overrated, which you would expect more of with a player that failed to live up fully to potential and ended up as a smaller league star.
considered a shy, humble character not interested in the media, just like Rivaldo, but not with the same driven, dedicated character. Which is probably why Rivaldo toughed things out under Van Gaal's distrust, while Giovanni took the big money/easier league offer from Olympiacos. Zagallo doesn't seem to have been very popular for the way he ignored and treated him in the national team, especially at the 98 World Cup. He was already out of the picture for Zagallo, either not rated or just not fitting to his system, and apparently only there because Zico bankrolled him. Whatever that means...the translated article wasn't always easy to read. So, Zagallo put him straight into the starting 11 against Scotland, in an unfamiliar centre-midfield/side-midfield'ish role having had only played 45 mins against Andorra since his last appearance at the start of the copa america 97 (18 minutes then kept on the bench). Predictably, not having been integrated at all into the team, he was shit and removed at half-time, then never used again. Fan myth making consensus (and Giovanni's own opinion from an interview i watched) seems zagallo deliberately set him up to fail/make a point, and the whole thing was a farce, with him a pawn caught up in typical media/association politics surrounding who plays in the national team.
The opinions of him from Greece seemed far more divided than Brazilian or Barca fans. Everyone seemed to agree he made a great first half-season, before sustaining an anterior cruciate ligament injury that put him out for the latter half. After that it gets a lot more critical...plenty of complaints about him now being injury-prone, low effort, not producing enough in big domestic games/CL; the usual overpaid star comes to a league he thinks he can play in 2nd-gear, but ends up underwhelming sort of stuff. He has to take a paycut or be transfer-listed before the 2003-04 season, then responds with 21 goals in 28 league games. Firm consensus that he's ineffective in CL away games where they play a defensive 4-5-1, or just as a figurehead striker in general. This complete with usual fan opinions on the manager being too inept to use the right formation to get the best out of everyone, too cowardly in Europe away etc...
Balancing this out was a similar amount of positive opinions considering him the best player in the team/league, that even if not great every game, he was producing more than enough decisive moments to make up for inconsistency/declining athleticism issues.That he's too often played out of position as a striker, which is where many of the lesser performances are. Generally considered to have improved a lot in last two seasons after the 01/02 and 02/03 decline, in one of which his partnership with Rivaldo was revived. Overall impression i got is that the serious injury he sustained probably had a lot more effect on him than many fans realised. Contemporary opinions on old forum topics are far harsher than later articles/comments after he had left/retired. As is often the case with very good/great but flawed players, things seem to have mellowed after his contribution was later fully assessed, but i like to get both views if i can. He's fully entrenched as a club great and one of their best foreign signings now.
incidentally, Olympiacos CL away record was bleak during that era. They didn't win a single away game in the 6 campaigns he took part in (not counting qualifiers), while at the same time they very rarely lost at home. Only United seemed to have their number over both games. You hardly see that sort of "home fortress" competitiveness from 2nd and 3rd tier league teams outside of the top five for now. I wonder if that away game streak is/was a record, as it could be at least another campaign longer depending on the tournaments either side of when Giovanni played.
Though it's too overstylised for my liking, this is a good compilation showing his touch and a lot of goals.
A brilliant pass to Djordjevic.
