OTD: LUIS HEMIR BORN

On this day in 2003, current Sunderland striker Luis Hemir was born in Lisbon, Portugal.

Hemir began his footballing journey with Portuguese giants Benfica in 2015. Signing an apprentice contract in 2018 and then a professional contract in 2020 after a prolific goalscoring record for the youth sides.

He continued to work his way up the ranks at Benfica, eventually finding himself playing a limited amount of senior football for their B team. He won the UEFA Youth League and scored the winning goal in the U20 Intercontinental Cup in 2022.

This put his name on the radar of some onlookers elsewhere on the continent, notably Juventus, AC Milan and Brighton and Hove Albion. Kristjaan Speakman seemingly worked his magic and attracted Hemir to Wearside, probably due to us being able to promise the youngster much more game time. Despite his contract expiring in just a few days, we chose to splash out a rumoured €500k for the player in order to maintain a good relationship with the Portuguese club.

With both of Sunderland’s other strikers injured, Mayenda and Stewart, he became Sunderland’s only fit striker going into the 2023-24 campaign and pre-season. He proved to be rather prolific during those warm-up games, scoring four times in pre-season. He was able to show off his strengths, dropping deep and holding up play using his physicality as well as his ability to poach balls into the box at close range to great effect.

He wasn’t able to make much of an impact during his first outing for Sunderland against Ipswich Town on the opening day, partly due to a lack of experience but also partly because the team didn’t exactly play to his strengths for some reason. Alas, this was about as good as it got for Luis in a Sunderland shirt, Mowbray favoured Mason Burstow ahead of him and so he was limited to minutes as a substitute until March 2024 when he was given a few starts under Mike Dodds. He never scored in any of his 23 appearances and would play just one more game in a Sunderland shirt the following season, making a cameo off the bench in a League Cup defeat.

After this, he was off to Italy, on loan, to Juventus. It was an odd move that raised a few eyebrows but he wasn't going to play for their senior side, obviously, but rather Juventus Next Gen (the reserves) who were (and still are) playing in Serie C (the third tier). He didn't do too well though, he scored just twice and assisted once in 27 matches and this was a deathblow to any semblance of a future on Wearside.

While his development didn't flow properly because Mowbray seemingly didn't have faith in him after a very bright preseason and then he wasn't given a run of games and had to deal with three different head coaches in his first season, he still didn't do himself any favours. For instance while playing for the U21s, he never looked particularly bothered (he did score a few times though) rather than trying to use it as a launchpad to more game time. His frustration is somewhat understandable though. Le Bris has marked him as one of the players who are set to leave in the near future and for the good of his career it's for the best. Still only 21, he can turn his career around. Probably somehwere in Mainland Europe, maybe back in Portugal.