Rochdale Football Club is pleased to announce the arrival of the highly rated Manchester United under 21 goalkeeper, Joel Castro Pereira.
The 19-year-old moves to Spotland from the Premier League side on a month long youth loan.
Castro Pereira, who has been capped by Portugal at under 19 level, joined United in 2012 and has recently signed a new deal at the club.
“I’m really pleased to be working with him,” said Manager Keith Hill.
“He’s an exciting goalkeeper. His distribution is flamboyant and his ability in goal is absolutely magnificent.
“He comes in to push Josh [Lillis] and Johny [Diba], and one of the main reasons for bringing him in is that we feel Johny is missing out on essential game time.”
Dale’s first team Goalkeeping Coach, Steve Collis, echoed those thoughts.
“Joel is at Manchester United and he’s there for a reason. He comes highly recommended.
“We got a chance to see him in the Lancashire Senior Cup game against United at Altrincham in the summer and he looked to be an exciting goalkeeper.
“We’re bringing him in to enhance the goalkeeping department – to push Josh [Lillis] and to help Johny get some game time [with the Youth Team].
“Johny needs to supplement his training with time on the pitch because he hasn’t had that for some time now. He’s a young goalkeeper with a lot of ability and in order for him to develop he needs to learn more about the game experience.
“He skipped the youth team, if you like, after making his first team debut at just 16-years old, so he perhaps needs to dip into the Youth Team sometimes to get game time because obviously we’d like to see him progress to play men’s football and progress in the future.”