Name	Pauleta
Height	5' 10"
Naionality	Portuguese
Date of Birth	April 28, 1973
Place of Birth	Ponta Delgada, Açores, Portugal
Famous for

1 Senior club appearances and goalscounted for the domestic league only andcorrect as of May 20, 2007.2 National team caps and goals correctas of July 9, 2006.* Appearances (Goals)

Pedro Miguel Carreiro Resendes, OIH (born April 28, 1973 in Ponta Delgada, Azores), nicknamed Pauleta (pron. IPA: ), is a Portuguese professional football player. He is a striker who currently plays for the French club Paris Saint-Germain, where he is team captain. He is the leading scorer for the Portuguese national team, having scored 47 goals in 89 matches. Pauleta played for his country in Euro 2000, the 2002 FIFA World Cup, Euro 2004, and the 2006 FIFA World Cup.

The striker's killer instinct is married to a deft touch with either foot, impressive aerial ability and excellent mobility. "Pauleta is a fighter, very strong and completely unpredictable," said his former coach at Paris Saint-Germain FC, Vahid Halihodzic.

He is also known for his goal celebration, in which he fully extends both arms and imitates soaring like a graceful goshawk. Its purpose is out of respect for the Azores, the islands off the coast of Portugal where he was born, and named after that bird.

Pauleta started his career at youth level playing for local clubs in the Azores, before turning professional with lower league clubs and working his way up the ranks. Pauleta signed his first professional contract with União Micaelense in 1994, spending a season at the club. He then moved to Estoril-Praia in 1995, scoring 19 goals in 30 league games.

The goals continued to flow following a switch to Spanish lower-league club UD Salamanca in 1996. Pauleta struck 19 times as the Spanish club gained promotion to the top-flight Spanish La Liga championship in 1997. He scored a further 15 times in his first season in the La Liga. That scoring rate earned a move to RC Deportivo La Coruña in 1998. Pauleta enjoyed a two-year spell with the Galician team, hitting 33 goals in 92 matches, including eight from 12 starts as Deportivo won theirfirst La Liga championship title in the 1999/2000 season.

Pauleta joined Girondins de Bordeaux in the top-flight French Ligue 1 division in September 2000, and enjoyed an impressive run with Girondins Bordeaux in hisfirst season. He scored a debut hat-trick as Bordeaux crushed FC Nantes Atlantique 5-0. He ended as Ligue 1's leading scorer with 21 goals in the 2001/2002 season. Subsequently, Pauleta was voted 2002 "Ligue 1 Footballer of the Year by fellow players and coaches. In total, he registered 65league goals in 98 games for Bordeaux and went on to win a second "Ligue 1 Footballer of the Year" award.

He joined Paris Saint-Germain ahead of the 2003/2004 season, signing a three-year contract in a reported €12m transfer deal. He helped the Parisians to theirfirst silverware in six years, by scoring the only goal of the 2004 French Cup final against LB Châteauroux. Pauleta continued his goal scoring in Ligue 1, registering 18 goals in 37 games, as PSG finished theleague in second place. On April 2, 2006 Pauleta scored his first hat-trick for Paris Saint-Germain against former club Girondins de Bordeaux, as Paris Saint-Germain won 3-1. Despite interest from defending French champions Olympique Lyonnais, Pauleta stayed at Paris-Saint Germain as he helped Paris clinch the 2006 French Cup title.

Pauleta has now claimed that he will retire from football in 2009. He states that his biggest regret is that he never got to play for the big 3 clubs (Barcelona, AC Milan and Real Madrid).

Pauleta was the first Portuguese national team player to never have played in Portugal's top-flight Portuguese Liga when he made his Portugal debut against Armenia in August 1997. He would have to wait 18 months for his first national team start, against the Netherlands. His first goals came a month later, when he scored two in a 7-0 rout of Azerbaijan.

A substitute at the Euro 2000 tournament, he led the Portuguese attack at the 2002 FIFA World Cup. Pauleta scored a hat-trick against Poland, and ended up scoring three times in as many games at the 2002 FIFA World Cup. Although he played all but one game on the road to the Euro 2004 final, he did not score in that tournament. Despite not scoring regularly at the big tournaments, he was one of the most prolific goal scorers in thePortuguese national team. On 12 October 2005, against Latvia, he became the national team's all-time goal scoring leader, surpassing Eusébio's previous record of 41 goals.

Pauleta was the European top scorer in the qualifying games for the 2006 FIFA World Cup. In a friendly match against Cape Verde in May 2006, preluding the final World Cup tournament, Pauleta showed great form as he found the net three times in aPortuguese 4-1 win. He scored the first goal for Portugal in the World Cup game against Angola, but failed to find the net again during the tournament. After Portugal's defeat to Germany in the third place play-off game, Pauleta announced his international retirement. Pauleta declared that he would retire in hisclub PSG.