Beto — If Attitude Alone Were a Determinant of Footballing Success

Little known to most Premier League fans at the time, Beto arrived in England almost three years ago to the day as the answer to an almost intractable problem for Everton.

Bound by the financial straightjacket of the existing Profitability and Sustainability Rules (PSR) and staring down the barrel of a points deduction from the Premier League that eventually came down in November 2023, then sporting director, Kevin Thelwell, had been scouring England and Europe for a striker capable of improving a squad that was stretched by Dominic Calvert-Lewin’s injury struggles and Neal Maupay’s poor form.

The catch was that Thelwell needed to secure a centre-forward option without any meaningful funds. Even a reported move for Viktor Gyökores, then at Coventry City and valued at around £20m, proved beyond Everton’s capability at the time.

Thelwell’s search eventually led to Udinese who were prepared to sell their Portuguese striker to Everton for what was, by most measures, an inflated £26m deal in return for agreeing to accept that the first payment tranche be deferred by 12 months.

The gangly, Lisbon-born player made an immediate impact, coming off the bench at Doncaster to spare Everton’s blushes in a Carabao Cup Second Round tie with an equaliser that was the Blues’ first goal of the 2023/24 season. It paved the way for another new acquisition, Arnaut Danjuma, to score the winner and book passage to the next round.

Unfortunately, that would be the only goal Beto would score until early December, an excellent breakaway goal in a 3-0 demolition of Newcastle that he followed up with Everton’s only goal in their ill-fated League Cup draw with Fulham that ended with a painful exit on penalties.

Two further goals over the second half of the season, in defeats to West Ham and Bournemouth, took his tally for his first year in England to five but questions were already being asked about his lack of genuine quality and suitability as a long-term option up front for the club.

By the end of his second season, Beto had begun to answer some of those questions. In an encouraging purple patch shortly after David Moyes replaced Sean Dyche as manager, he notched six times in five games, including the opening goal in the Goodison derby and a brace against Leicester City as a nine-game unbeaten run in the Premier League took the Toffees clear of relegation danger.

At the time, it looked as though Everton had unlocked something by finally playing to the strengths that been the under-pinning of Beto's relative success in Serie A: through-balls played through or behind the defence for the big striker to power onto and, more often than not, finish.

Frustratingly, the team didn’t employ that strategy nearly enough, and he would only score twice more before the end of 2024/25.

The summer of 2025 would have been a good time for the club to try and cash in on their unpredictable asset as his stock was, arguably, at its highest coming off a 10-goal season and with two years left on his contract.

Instead, Everton added young French forward, Thierno Barry, for £27m and Moyes spent the following season swapping the two strikers in and out to see which of the pair could stake a claim to the starting role on a permanent basis.

Barry struggled to make an impact in his own first year in England and wouldn’t find the net until early December but, in that time, Beto only managed one league goal of his own, the first of Everton’s three in a 3-2 victory over Wolves at Molineux.

It was clear that neither player was convincing the manager that they deserved the “No 9“ starting role (in a display of confidence in his own ability, Beto had taken the actual iconic shirt number the season before).

For the Guinea-Bissau international (Beto had opted to represent the African nation), it was a continuation of his inability to find any consistency in his performances. Often let down by poor control and hold-up play in some matches where it was mused that he knew as much of what he might do next as unwitting opponents, he could come alive in others, bamboozling defenders and scoring important goals off the bench.

As his body of work at Everton increased, however, the more evident it became that he wasn’t the long-term answer to the Blues’ attacking needs but it wasn’t for a lack of effort or determination on his part.

Beto had famously worked at KFC in Portugal while working hard on his development as an awkward but willing teenager and that industrious ethic was there for all to see every time he took to the pitch. And there were times when emotion got the better of him upon scoring a goal in Everton colours in the hope that each one would represent a turning point in his career in England.

Moyes would make mention more than once of the player's drive to try and better himself with extra training.

He would end 2025/26 as the Toffees’ top scorer in all competitions with 10 goals, including five in six games in another briefly inspired spell towards the end of the campaign but by that stage Moyes appeared to have largely made up his mind that he could no longer carry two unreliable centre-forwards.

Which brought Beto to his return to Italy today in a £15m transfer to Fiorentina where he will replace another former Everton striker in Moise Kean. While he didn’t quite make the grade with the Blues, he was an ever-willing stop-gap who always gave maximum effort even if his limitations ultimately prevented him from realising his dream of remaining the team’s undisputed No 9.

Evertonians will wish him well in the next chapter of his career and, perhaps, rue the fact that a player so endearing and with such heart and desire to succeed wasn’t quite able to do so, either at Goodison Park or Bramley-Moore Dock.