We've been linked with numerous Brazilian talents over the past year, and on Tuesday some reports out of Italy are linking us to another. Gianluca Di Marzio is claiming that Chelsea are working hard to sign Bernard Anício Caldeira Duarte, simply known as Bernard. Bernard plays for Atletico Mineiro, who happen to be one of the better teams in Brazil.

I haven't really watched Bernard all that much, but at 5'4" tall (or short) I guess he's easy enough to overlook. I see that my nearly full DVR still contains four Mineiro games though, so I imagine I've just found yet another reason not to erase them in favor of keeping Juve/Chelsea or this weekend's "thriller" against City. Any excuse to never watch those dreadful games again will work for me, so I guess I'll be kissing them goodbye.

I don't know too much about Di Marzio, but a quick look at his website and his twitter timeline doesn't make him appear to be a typical rumor monger. He appears to be the only one reporting this as of now though, so we'll need to keep an eye out to see who else picks this story up. I'm certainly not going to treat this as reliable news yet, but it has enough potential that I'll be paying more attention to the player from this point forward.

Here's a little highlight reel so you can see what the player looks like. As always, it's just Youtube, but at least it's something to confirm that he is, in fact, short:



