Tavares spent 15 seasons with Slovenian team Maribor, and is the club's all-time most capped player and top goalscorer.

[4][5] Tavares was born in Porto Alegre and spent his childhood in the city's slums with his father, a worker at Internacional, and his mother, a teacher.

[6] Tavares claims he started playing football to help his family, and after spending a few years at Internacional youth selections, he was noticed by their city rivals Grêmio at the age of 13 and accepted their financial offer to switch clubs as he wanted to provide the financial means for his father to build a bigger home.

[6] Tavares has maintained that he was unable to manage the conflict between professional and personal life during his teenage years, and that his excessive partying, drinking and overall lack of discipline contributed to his failure to succeed in Brazil.

[10] After that, he once again continued his career in Kedah, where he was the team's top goalscorer in the 2005–06 Malaysia Premier League with twelve goals.

[13] While playing for APOEL, Tavares met Nilton Fernandes, who introduced him to Zlatko Zahovič, the director of football at the Slovenian team Maribor.

[27] In December 2012, Tavares was again selected as the most distinguished player of the previous season by the fans of Maribor, winning his second "Purple Warrior" trophy.

[25] He was officially announced as the winner during the half-time of the UEFA Europa League game against Lazio on 6 December, where he later scored his 14th goal in European competitions.

[31] On 26 April 2014, Tavares scored his 117th goal for Maribor in a league match against Koper, tying with Branko Horjak as the club's all-time top goalscorer.

[33] On 26 August 2014, he scored the only goal of the match in a 1–0 win over Celtic in the UEFA Champions League play-off round, helping Maribor to qualify for the group stage of the competition for the first time since 1999.

[35] On 16 August 2017, Tavares scored in a 2–1 defeat against Hapoel Be'er-Sheva in the Champions League play-off round, which was the crucial away goal as Maribor won the second leg 1–0 and qualified for the group stages.

[39] A few days later, on 6 December 2017, Tavares scored his first goal in the group stages of the UEFA Champions League in a 1–1 home draw against Sevilla.