Aluísio Chaves Ribeiro Moraes Júnior (born 4 April 1987), commonly known as Júnior Moraes or just Moraes, is a Brazilian-born Ukrainian professional footballer who plays for Ukrainian club Shakhtar Donetsk and the Ukraine national team as a forward. He received Ukrainian citizenship in March 2019.
Early years
Junior Moraes was born on April 15, 1987 in Santos.His father played football at a professional level, played for Flamengo and Santos. Mother played tennis. He also has an older brother, Bruno Moraes, who also plays football at a professional level. He began playing football at the age of four, later playing football at the Santos school, where Robinho played with him.
Club career
In 2006, he joined Santos. He made his debut in the team on May 13, 2007 in a match against Sport Recife (4:1), Moraes came out at 61 minutes instead of Jonas. In total, for Santos in the Brazilian Championship, he played 16 matches and scored 2 goals (against Botafogo and Flamengo), also played 2 matches in the 2007 Copa Libertadores against Gremio. In 2007, together with the team, he won the Paulista League.
In early 2010, he moved to the Romanian Gloria from the city of Bistrita, the club paid 10 thousand euros for him. He made his debut in the Romanian Championship on February 20, 2010 in a home match against Timisoara (0:0) [6], in this match Moraes received a yellow card. In the second half of the 2009/10 season, Junior Moraes scored 10 goals in 17 matches and became the top scorer of his team. In the summer of 2010, information appeared that Moraes could go to Shakhtar Donetsk or Romanian Steaua, Rapid or Vaslui.
Moraes was named the best legionnaire of the Romanian championship in 2010 according to the results of a survey by the Gazeta Sporturilor newspaper, and he also became the best striker of the championship. In total, he played 32 matches for Gloria and scored 18 goals in the Romanian championship.
In February 2011, he signed a three-year contract with Metallurg Donetsk . The club paid 1,250,000 euros for him, Moraes wanted to go to Steaua, with whom he negotiated for six months. He negotiated with Metallurg for only two days, besides, Marian Aliutse recommended him to the Donetsk club[12]. He could also go to the Russian club Krasnodar.
He made his debut in Metallurg on February 12, 2011 in a friendly match against the Kazakh Lokomotiv (3:0), Moraes came out on 61 minutes instead of Ciprian Tenase.
After the end of the 20th championship of Ukraine, he moved to CSKA Sofia . Having scored 16 goals in the 2011/12 season, he became the top scorer in the Bulgarian championship, winning silver medals with his club.
July 18, 2012 Junior Moraes returns to Donetsk, having signed a three-year contract with Metalurh.
On May 22, 2015, he moved to Dynamo Kiev. The contract was signed for a period of three years. In February 2017, he moved on loan to Chinese side Tianjin Quanjian. At the end of the 2017/18 season, he left Dynamo.
On June 18, 2018, he signed a two-year agreement with Shakhtar Donetsk as a free agent, which caused outrage among the fans of his former club, Dynamo Kiev, as Shakhtar's main rival in the fight for the championship.
On August 25, 2019, in the match of the 5th round of the Ukrainian championship with FC Mariupol (5:1), Junior Moraes scored the 100th goal in the Ukrainian career, becoming the 16th player to reach this milestone in the national teams during the years of independence.
Team career
By the Decree of the President of Ukraine dated March 15, 2019, he received the citizenship of Ukraine.
On March 19, 2019, he received his debut call-up to the Ukrainian national team for the matches of the qualifying tournament for Euro 2020 against the national teams of Portugal and Luxembourg. He made his debut on March 22 in a match against Portugal (0:0), replacing Roman Yaremchuk in the 76th minute.
On March 26, 2019, the Portuguese media MaisFutebol reported on naturalization violations, in connection with which the Luxembourg Football Federation filed a protest with FIFA, which was rejected.
On March 28, 2021, he scored his first goal for the Ukrainian national team in the home match of the second round of the 2022 World Cup qualifying tournament against the Finnish team (1: 1), opening the scoring in the 80th minute of the game.He became the oldest debut goal scorer in the Ukrainian national team - Moraes scored a goal at the age of 33 years 358 days (previously, the oldest player who scored a debut goal for the Ukrainian national team was Edmar, who scored for the first time against the San Marino team (9 :0) in 2013 at the age of 33 years and 82 days).
Achievements
Command
"Santos"
- Paulista League Winner: 2007
"Dynamo Kyiv"
- Champion of Ukraine: 2015/16
- Winner of the Super Cup of Ukraine: 2016
- Silver medalist of the championships of Ukraine: 2016/17, 2017/18
"Tianjin Quanjian"
- Bronze medalist of the Chinese Championship: 2017
"Shakhtar Donetsk"
- Champion of Ukraine: 2018/19, 2019/20
- Ukrainian Cup Winner: 2018/19
Personal
- Top scorer of the Bulgarian championship: 2011/12 (16 goals, together with Ivan Stoyanov)
- The best scorer of the championship of Ukraine (2): 2018/19 (19 goals), 2019/20 (20 goals)
- Member of Maxim Shatskikh's Scorer Club: 100 goals.
Married. Two children - son Issac Luka Marodin (b. 2014), daughter (b. 2017) Maria Julia. On March 18, 2019, he accepted the citizenship of Ukraine.
