António 'Toni' Leonel Vidigal (born 1 March 1975) is a Portuguese retired professional

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 ...

who played as a

central midfielder A midfielder is an outfield position in association football. Midfielders may play an exclusively defensive role, breaking up attacks, and are in that case known as defensive midfielders. As central midfielders often go across boundarie ...

Football career

Born in

Elvas Elvas () is a Portuguese municipality, former episcopal city and frontier fortress of easternmost central Portugal, located in the district of Portalegre in Alentejo. It is situated about east of Lisbon, and about west of the Spanish fortress ...

Portalegre District Portalegre District ( pt, Distrito de Portalegre ) is located in the east of Portugal. The district capital is the city of Portalegre. As of 2021, it is the least populous district of Portugal. Municipalities The district is composed of 15 mu ...

, Vidigal made his senior debuts at only 16, with O Elvas C.A.D. in the third division. In 1994 he signed with G.D. Estoril Praia in the second level, going on to remain the following seven years in that tier, also representing Vitória de Setúbal, F.C. Penafiel and Varzim SC, achieving

Primeira Liga The Primeira Liga (; English: Premier League, also written as Liga Portugal 1), also known as Liga Portugal Bwin for sponsorship reasons, is the top level of the Portuguese football league system. Organised and supervised by the Liga Portugal ...

promotion with the latter in 2001. After two seasons with Varzim in the top flight (45 games, one goal) and a third in the second division, Vidigal signed with C.D. Portosantense in level three. Aged 31, he returned to his first senior club, now in the fourth tier, closing out his career in 2010 after a brief spell with amateurs Club Sintra Football.

Personal life

Vidigal had four brothers who were also footballers (from a total of 13 siblings):

Beto Beto is a surname, and a nickname for the given names Alberto, Albertino, Adalberto, Berthony, Heriberto, Norberto, Roberto, Humberto, or Benito. It occurs mostly in Portuguese- and Spanish-speaking countries and communities. Notable people with the ...

, Luís, Lito and

Jorge Jorge is a Spanish and Portuguese given name. It is derived from the Greek name Γεώργιος (''Georgios'') via Latin ''Georgius''; the former is derived from (''georgos''), meaning "farmer" or "earth-worker". The Latin form ''Georgius'' ...

. The second represented

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic, In recognized minority languages of Portugal: :* mwl, República Pertuesa is a country located on the Iberian Peninsula, in Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Macaronesian ...

internationally, whilst the third opted to appear for

Angola , national_anthem = "Angola Avante"() , image_map = , map_caption = , capital = Luanda , religion = , religion_year = 2020 , religion_ref = , coordina ...

; his nephew,

André André — sometimes transliterated as Andre — is the French and Portuguese form of the name Andrew, and is now also used in the English-speaking world. It used in France, Quebec, Canada and other French-speaking countries. It is a variation ...

, was also involved in the sport professionally.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Vidigal, Toni 1975 births Living people People from Elvas Portuguese sportspeople of Angolan descent Portuguese footballers Association football midfielders Primeira Liga players Liga Portugal 2 players Segunda Divisão players O Elvas C.A.D. players G.D. Estoril Praia players Vitória F.C. players F.C. Penafiel players Varzim S.C. players Sportspeople from Portalegre District