Carlos Jorge Marques Caldas Xavier (born 26 January 1962) is a Portuguese retired

footballer A football player or footballer is a sportsperson who plays one of the different types of football. The main types of football are association football, American football, Canadian football, Australian rules football, Gaelic football, rugby lea ...

who played as a

midfielder In the sport of association football, a midfielder takes an Glossary of association football terms#O, outfield position primarily in the middle of the pitch. Midfielders may play an exclusively defensive role, breaking up attacks, and are in t ...

Club career

Born in

Lourenço Marques Maputo () is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Mozambique. Located near the southern end of the country, it is within of the borders with Eswatini and South Africa. The city has a population of 1,088,449 (as of 2017) distributed ov ...

Portuguese Mozambique Portuguese Mozambique () or Portuguese East Africa () were the common terms by which Mozambique was designated during the period in which it was a Portuguese Empire, Portuguese overseas province. Portuguese Mozambique originally constituted a str ...

, Xavier began his professional career with

Lisbon Lisbon ( ; ) is the capital and largest city of Portugal, with an estimated population of 567,131, as of 2023, within its administrative limits and 3,028,000 within the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, metropolis, as of 2025. Lisbon is mainlan ...

-based

Sporting CP Sporting Clube de Portugal (), otherwise referred to as Sporting CP or simply Sporting (particularly within Portugal), or as Sporting Lisbon in other countries,

, already being a regular first-team fixture at age 19. He played 23

Primeira Liga The Primeira Liga (), also known as Liga Portugal Betclic for sponsorship reasons, is a professional association football league in Portugal and the highest level of the Portuguese football league system. Organised and supervised by the Liga ...

games as the ''Lions'' won the title in the 1981–82 season, which would be the last until 2000. In 1991, after more than 250 competitive appearances, Xavier moved, alongside compatriot and teammate

Oceano Oceano (Spanish: ''Océano'', meaning "Ocean") is a census-designated place (CDP) in San Luis Obispo County, California, United States. The population was 7,183 at the 2020 census, down from 7,286 at the 2010 census. Geography Oceano is locat ...

, to Spain's

Real Sociedad Real Sociedad de Fútbol, more commonly referred to as Real Sociedad ( ; ''Royal Society'') in English, and Erreala or Reala in Basque language, Basque, is a Spanish professional sports club in the city of San Sebastián, Donostia / San Sebastián, ...

, where the pair was equally influential, having been reunited with former Sporting boss

John Toshack John Benjamin Toshack (born 22 March 1949) is a Welsh former professional football player and manager. He began his playing career as a teenager with his hometown club Cardiff City, becoming the youngest player to make an appearance for the ...

at the

La Liga The Campeonato Nacional de Liga de Primera División, commonly known as the Primera División or La Liga, and officially known as LaLiga EA Sports for sponsorship reasons, is a professional association football league in Spain and the highest ...

side. Both Xavier and Oceano returned to Sporting in the summer of 1994, and the former played two more years before retiring at the age of 34. In the 2004–05 campaign he had a brief spell at coaching, assisting at another club from the capital and the top division,

G.D. Estoril Praia Grupo Desportivo Estoril Praia (), commonly known as Estoril, is a Portuguese professional sports club from Estoril, Cascais, Lisbon. Founded on 17 May 1939, its Association football, football team currently plays in Primeira Liga and hold home g ...

International career

Xavier won ten

caps Caps are flat headgear. Caps or CAPS may also refer to: Science and technology Computing * CESG Assisted Products Service, provided by the U.K. Government Communications Headquarters * Composite Application Platform Suite, by Java Caps, a Java ...

for

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic, is a country on the Iberian Peninsula in Southwestern Europe. Featuring Cabo da Roca, the westernmost point in continental Europe, Portugal borders Spain to its north and east, with which it share ...

, then switched successfully to its beach soccer team.

Personal life

Xavier's

twin Twins are two offspring produced by the same pregnancy.MedicineNet > Definition of Twin Last Editorial Review: 19 June 2000 Twins can be either ''monozygotic'' ('identical'), meaning that they develop from one zygote, which splits and forms two ...

brother,

Pedro Pedro is a masculine given name. Pedro is the Spanish, Portuguese, and Galician name for ''Peter''. Its French equivalent is Pierre while its English and Germanic form is Peter. The counterpart patronymic surname of the name Pedro, meanin ...

, was also a footballer. A

forward Forward is a relative direction, the opposite of backward. Forward may also refer to: People *Forward (surname) Sports * Forward (association football) * Forward (basketball), including: ** Point forward ** Power forward (basketball) ** Smal ...

, he represented several teams in the country (coinciding with Carlos at

Académica de Coimbra The Associação Académica de Coimbra (AAC) is the students' union of the University of Coimbra (UC). Founded in Coimbra on November 3, 1887, it is the oldest students' union in Portugal. It is also the biggest Portuguese students' union belongin ...

) in an 18-year professional career. Xavier lived in

Quinta da Beloura Quinta da Beloura is an affluent gated community and golf resort located in Linhó, Sintra, Linhó, Sintra, on the Portuguese Riviera. The community is known for hosting numerous golf tournaments, tennis opens, and equestrian & dressage events, as ...

, a gated community in

Sintra Sintra (, ), officially the Town of Sintra (), is a town and municipality in the Greater Lisbon region of Portugal, located on the Portuguese Riviera. The population of the municipality in 2021 was 385,654, in an area of . Sintra is one of the ...

on the

Portuguese Riviera The Portuguese Riviera (Portuguese language, Portuguese: ''Riviera Portuguesa'') is a term used for the affluent coastal region to the west of Lisbon, Portugal, centered on the coastal municipalities of Cascais (including Estoril), Oeiras, Portug ...

. On 8 September 2023, while speaking to Sporting TV, he referred to

FC Porto Futebol Clube do Porto, Order of Prince Henry, MHIH, Order of Merit (Portugal), OM (), commonly known as FC Porto or simply Porto, is a Portuguese professional sports club based in Porto. It is best known for the professional association footbal ...

Iranian forward

Mehdi Taremi Mehdi Taremi (, ; born 18 July 1992) is an Iranian professional association football, footballer who plays as a striker (association football), striker for Serie A club Inter Milan and the Iran national football team, Iran national team. A late ...

as "a

Muslim Muslims () are people who adhere to Islam, a Monotheism, monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God ...

who, when he came to Portugal, didn’t know how to swim and now he knows how to

dive Diving most often refers to: * Diving (sport), the sport of jumping into deep water * Underwater diving, human activity underwater for recreational or occupational purposes Diving or Dive may also refer to: Sports * Dive (American football), a ...

"; as a result, the club was fined €15,300 by the

Portuguese Football Federation The Portuguese Football Federation ( , FPF) is the governing body of Association football, football in Portugal. The federation was formed in 1914 as Portuguese Football Union (, UPF) by the three existing regional associations of Lisbon Footbal ...

Honours

Sporting CP *

: 1981–82 *

Taça de Portugal The Taça de Portugal (; ) is an annual association football competition and the premier knockout tournament in Portuguese football. For sponsorship reasons, it has been known as Taça de Portugal Generali Tranquilidade since the 2024–25 seaso ...

: 1994–95 *

Supertaça Cândido de Oliveira The Supertaça Cândido de Oliveira (; English: Cândido de Oliveira Super Cup, or simply Portuguese Super Cup) is an annual Portuguese association football, football match played since 1979 between the winners of the top-tier league (Primeira L ...

1995 1995 was designated as: * United Nations Year for Tolerance * World Year of Peoples' Commemoration of the Victims of the Second World War This was the first year that the Internet was entirely privatized, with the United States government ...

References

External links

* * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Xavier, Carlos 1962 births Living people Portuguese twins 20th-century Portuguese sportsmen Portuguese men's footballers Footballers from Maputo Men's association football midfielders Primeira Liga players Sporting CP footballers Académica de Coimbra (football) players La Liga players Real Sociedad footballers Portugal men's youth international footballers Portugal men's under-21 international footballers Portugal men's international footballers Portuguese expatriate men's footballers Expatriate men's footballers in Spain Portuguese expatriate sportspeople in Spain