Former Leeds United promotion winner makes Chinese Super League move after football sabbatical
Ex-Leeds United winger Helder Costa has joined Chinese Super League club Yunnan Yukun.
The 31-year-old Angolan international has signed with the newly-promoted Chinese side ahead of the 2025 season which begins next month.
Costa had been playing for Portuguese top flight club Estoril Praia earlier this season but has now sealed a January transfer to the Far East.
This comes following a spell without a club spanning 10 months, between his Leeds release in October 2023.
Costa played 71 times for United, scoring eight goals and creating a further 11 for his teammates. He was a member of Marcelo Bielsa's squad that clinched promotion back to the top flight for the first time in 16 years during 2019/20 and was subsequently signed on a permanent deal but struggled to hold down a place in the team, particularly after Raphinha's arrival.
The one-cap Portugal international, who switched nationalities to the country of his birth Angola in 2021, played 13 times for Estoril this season, scoring once and assisting twice but has opted to leave European football for China.
While several years ago, China's footballing scene boomed with the signing of many high-profile players on reportedly eye-watering wages, the sport has been wracked by a restrictive salary cap imposed by the Chinese Football Association, corruption scandals and many clubs going bankrupt in the years following the COVID-19 pandemic as centralised funding was pulled from many state-supported teams.
Costa's new outfit Yunnan Yukun were only founded in 2021 and last season crowned champions of the second division. The new campaign is scheduled to get underway on February 21.