Not many believed Deivid De Souza will be wearing a Fenerbahce shirt at the start of this season, but his manager Zico kept faith in his number 99 and he has crab danced his way permanently into the starting eleven.

Despite scoring important goals, Deivid was never a popular figure at Sukru Saraccoglu in his debut season. Neither his hat-trick against Vestel Manisaspor or the goal against Trabzon that effectively won the title was enough to change these views. Deivid just did not cut it for the fans and more importantly he occupied one of the six valuable foreign player spots to boot.

In the close season speculation was rife that the Turkish Football Association (TFF) would be increasing the foreign player allocation. Rumours ranged from 7 or 8 to unlimited foreign players being eligible to play for Turkish teams. Naturally, Fenerbahce was among the hopeful that the limit would increase to a reasonable number at the least. After a lengthy delay the TFF announced their decision and raised the limit to 6+1. Basically, 6 players starting in the first 11 and 1 on the bench whom can only replace a foreign player when being substituted on to the playing field. This was not the decison that the Fenerbahce board and fans were hoping for and the calls for Deivid to be transferred out of Fenerbahce increased further.

A seemingly unfazed Deivid De Souza continued training hard and put in some notable performances in the pre-season matches he featured in. This still was not enough to change the views of the fans or some of the doubtful board members neither. However, Zico reassured everyone that they would be seeing a different Deivid for the upcoming season and that we should all trust his judgement.

Roll on to this season and the player who has adopted a crab dance as his goal celebration, became the scorer of a sensational goal in the historic 1-0 Champions’ League win over Inter Milan; the equaliser in Moscow against CSKA with a thunderbolt strike from 35 yards out with 5 minutes left on the clock; and a major contributor in the 3 domestic derbies, banging one each against Besiktas, Galatasaray and Trabzonspor.

Now the transfer hungry fans and critics agree that Fenerbahce require a new striker, preferably a prolific foreign one. However, their expendable player names have switched from Deivid to the previously irreplaceable Kezman and even Appiah. What a difference a few goals and 6 months makes...

All hail Deivid for his Goliath achievement!