Bravo: Raul Senfelix

2003-2003 (Leeds Player Details)(Player Details)

Left Back/Defender

Born: Gandia, Spain: 14-04-1981

Debut v West Ham United (h): 08-02-2003

5’9” 11st 2lb (2003)

Bravo's football career began in the 1995-96 season, when he joined Real Madrid and played in their teenage team. He then moved up into the Junior B team and was capped at Under-Sixteen level by Spain in the 1997-98 season, when the national team won the Algarve Tournament. He scored one goal in ten appearances as a Spanish Under-Sixteen player. He was then capped at Under-Seventeen and played in the Nymburk International Tournament, where he scored two goals in three games. By that time he was playing with the Junior A team at Real, where he continued to play for two more seasons, from 1998 to 2000, before taking the next steps into Real Madrid's Reserve team in the Third Division in 2000-01, where he made seven appearances, and then into the Second Division B in 2001-02, when he scored twice in twenty-eight games. He made his first team debut on 6th October 2001 against Athletico Madrid at the Bernabeu, when the game clashed with International fixtures which robbed Real of several first team players, and went on to make six appearances in that season. He was capped three times in the Spanish Under-Twenty-One side. His progress continued and he scored one goal in two appearances before he was loaned to Leeds from 31st January 2003 to 12th May 2003 in a traumatic period as they struggled for Premiership survival, under Terry Venables and later Peter Reid. The understudy to Roberto Carlos at Real, he had already been capped six times by Spain at full International level, having made his debut on 21st August 2002 in a friendly against Hungary, and added to that while at Elland Road, when he played in a 3-0 home win over Armenia in a European Cup qualifier on 2nd April 2004. He later played many times for Real in La Liga and the ECL and has amassed fourteen caps for Spain, of which two were as a substitute. His pedigree was undoubted, but for Leeds he was a player in the wrong place at the wrong time. He signed a three year contract with Real Madrid in 2006, but in July 2007 the chance to be a first team regular in the Champions League was too good to turn down and Bravo started to wear the red and white jersey of Olympiakos in Greece for the next four years. The transfer fee was estimated in the region of £1.5million, while the player was to have an annual salary of £850,000. While at the Bernabeu he had scored twice in fifty-two starts and two games from the bench in La Liga and started seventeen and was a substitute on seven occasions in other games. Bravo had only made thirteen appearances for Olympiakos in the first two seasons and so returned to Spain for a short spell with the struggling CD Numancia in the January 2009 transfer window, having almost no impact in a relegation-ending campaign, in which he made eleven appearances. He returned to Olympiakos and regained the left back spot ahead of Leonardo and former Leeds loan player, Didier Domi, making forty-four League appearances to bring his total to fifty-seven, before being released in May 2011. He joined Real Vallecano on 1st September 2011 and made his debut for them in a 1-2 home defeat by Levante on 21st September 2011.