Last week, several English papers picked up on this and claimed that Edu had either already got his Portuguese passport or had already signed for Arsenal.

On Friday Arsenal acted to to temper this excitement. Arsene Wenger said, "We haven't signed Edu, he cannot get his passport until January and we haven't actually had the chance to sign him from Corinthians."

Wenger confirmed that he is very keen to finish the deal, and that he's been regularly talking to Edu during the months of uncertainty. But he also stressed that we shouldn't get too excited about seeing him play for Arsenal in the very near future. "If we were to sign him, we can almost certainly forget about seeing him play this season because I feel that Brazilians take around five or six months to develop in the English game.".

With that in mind, the situation still looks healthy according to Brasilian sources. We're slightly worried that one paper is saying that Edu's brother Jean is currently in Portugal with Juan Figger/Figar, trying to sort things out. Figger is the agent who seems to be up to his neck in the dodgy passports scandal being investigated by the Brasilian authorities.

Edu probably won't be thinking about all this so much just now. At the weekend his 26 year old sister Fabrícia Daude Caspar was killed in a car crash in Sao Paulo. Her fiance is is still in a critical condition.

Thanks to Charles for info.