How do you replace Dani Alves?

Dani Alves turned 37 earlier this year. He has made no secret of his desire to play at World Cup 2022, yet he will be pushing 40 by the time it begins. It is a lot to ask for him to maintain his level until then.

This represents a challenge for Brazil in two respects. Most straightforwardly, there just aren’t that many Brazilian right-backs around at the moment. Then there is Alves’ particular interpretation of his position. 

He may once have been a rampaging touchline-hugger in the traditional mould, but at Juventus and Paris Saint-Germain especially he took on more creative responsibilities — not just from the flank but increasingly from central areas.

With the cupboard relatively bare, it looks as though Tite is going to try something a little different in an attempt to find an alternative for Alves. Read how on The Athletic.

Does Thiago Silva have something to prove at Chelsea?

Thiago Silva is not fulfilling a lifetime ambition by moving to the Premier League. 

He made it very clear that he wanted to stay at Paris Saint-Germain this summer, and his hand was forced by Leonardo's desire to refresh the first team at the Parc des Princes.

But the move to Chelsea does present him with a series of opportunities: to help guide a young, exciting team; to keep himself in the Brazil conversation until World Cup 2022; to prove, after eight seasons in France, that he could have cut it in any of Europe’s top leagues.

And, of course, that PSG were wrong to let him go.

Read my piece on Silva — an excellent defender who hasn't always convinced everyone — on The Athletic.

The giant heart behind Richarlison's scowl

When Richarlison signed his first sponsorship deal with Nike, he did not celebrate or lord it over his team-mates.

No, he went back to his dorm room, stuffed his old clothes into a suitcase, then went into town and handed them out to homeless people. 

This is just one of the stories I heard from those who know Richarlison best. "He’s just spectacular," one of his former coaches said. "The kind of person who seems to have been designed differently by the big guy up in the sky. I get emotional just talking about him.”

Read the rest of this piece, about the giant heart behind Richarlison's scowl, on The Athletic. 

The Alexandre Pato conundrum

Alexandre Pato is still only 30 years old.

It is really not difficult to conjure an alternate timeline in which he has racked up hundreds of goals for a Champions League team and is gearing up for a fourth World Cup as Brazil’s No 9.

Instead, he is toiling away for São Paulo, his best run of form in the last decade having come not in Europe but in the Chinese Super League. He dreams of a return to Milan, but that possibility looks well beyond him now. He last played for his country seven years ago.

It is a dizzying contrast. And so the question persists: What on earth happened?

I tried to answer that question, with the help of James Horncastle, for The Athletic. 

Wellington Silva interview: Where it went wrong for Arsenal's best-ever Brazilian triallist

Those who work regularly at the Arsenal training ground see many young prospects come and go but few stick in the memory quite like Wellington Silva

Even after his first few training sessions, word began to spread through the club about the boy from Rio with the big smile and the silken touch. "He was, quite simply, the best triallist we’d ever seen," says one insider from that time.

But Wellington never appeared for the Arsenal first team. Arsenal did sign him permanently but work permit problems meant him spending several seasons out on loan, drastically impeding his development. “I have good memories I will always carry with me,” Wellington reflects. “Unfortunately, things didn’t quite turn out as I hoped.”

Read my interview with Wellington Silva – written up with the excellent Arsenal correspondent James McNicholas – on The Athletic.

Rafael Cabral won the Libertadores with Neymar at Santos. Now he’s shining at Reading and hoping for a Brazil recall

Rafael Cabral has been one of the breakout stars of the Championship season, putting in a series of spectacular displays for Reading.

But anyone who witnessed Rafael’s first steps in the senior game would be forgiven for being slightly puzzled at his CV, particularly the most recent sections.

This is a player who, for a time, was regarded as the next great Brazilian goalkeeper; who was a key man for Santos during their most successful spell since the 1960s; whose profile was such that he made a cameo in a Brazilian teen soap opera alongside Neymar.

Now, after a tough spell in Italy, he appears to have his mojo back. Read my interview with him on The Athletic.

Ronaldinho in prison: this is a tragedy, not a comedy

As he celebrates his 40th birthday behind bars, Ronaldinho has time to do some thinking.

His playing career was a study in shimmering, off-the-cuff virtuosity, but his existence since his retirement — he officially called it a day in 2018, over two years after playing his final match for Fluminense — has been defined by amateurism and cringing ignominy.

The photos of football’s last great libertine wearing handcuffs in a Paraguayan jail have gone around the world. While they may jar at first glance, this feels like the logical endpoint of a slow journey towards the abyss.

Read my piece on the mortal behind the Ronaldinho myth on The Athletic. 

Glauber Berti played just six minutes' football for Man City. How exactly did he become such a cult hero?

Vincent Kompany, David Silva, Sergio Aguero: these are Manchester City’s modern icons. You could make a decent case for a Yaya Toure wing or a Pablo Zabaleta sun lounge.

Glauber Berti, the Brazilian defender who arrived in Manchester in summer 2008 and left a year later after playing just six minutes of first-team football, shouldn’t really be in the same conversation.

Yet in his own way, Glauber is the ultimate City cult hero. While the reasons for that might elude the casual observer, they are both legitimate and instructive, revealing plenty about the complex tides of fandom.

Read my interview with the one-game wonder on The Athletic. 

Meet Matheus Pereira, the sparky young Brazilian lighting up the Championship with West Brom

West Bromwich Albion had been told that Matheus Pereira could be high-maintenance, but they signed him anyway.

But their calculated gamble has paid off handsomely, the 23-year-old Brazilian emerging as the key creative force in Albion’s rise to the top of the Championship as the season approaches the halfway point.

And at some stage in the next few months, possibly as early as January, the Sporting Lisbon loanee will become a permanent Albion player in a deal worth just £9 million. Given his thrilling performances in 18 games so far for the club, the cost of the pending transfer is puzzlingly low, to the extent that fans, pundits and even some inside the club are wondering whether there must be a catch.

Read my piece on West Brom's promising young Brazilian on The Athletic.

Meet Gabriel Veron, the natural-born dribbler aiming to follow Gabriel Jesus from Palmeiras to the big time

Gabriel Veron is a born dribbler.

He is fast – very, very fast – but also measured. It’s all very well haring down the flank, but you have to know when to slow down, when to bide your time. It’s in the hips – ginga, they call it here – and it’s in the eyes: you tell your marker a story and then change the ending. One minute you’re there, and the next you’re not. Veron is still young, but he has all of that.

“It’s the essence of Brazilian football,” Brazil Under-17 coach Guilherme Della Dea says. “He’s already a master at it.”

Read my profile of one of the exciting Palmeiras winger, who is currently shining for his country at the U-17 World Cup, on The Athletic. 

Whatever happened to Leandro Damião?

Eight years on from the season that shot him to fame, Leandro Damião could barely be further from the gossip columns.

He is 30 and playing in Japan. He has not featured for Brazil since 2013. He scored against Chelsea in July, but that was in a pre-season friendly, and his chances of ever playing in the Premier League have now dwindled to precisely zero.

His name, once synonymous with irrational hope, now evokes a sort of bruised nostalgia. When people think of him at all, they do so in the form of a rhetorical question: “Whatever happened to Leandro Damiao?”

So, what did happen?

Find out in my latest for The Athletic.

Gabriel Martinelli wants the world and he wants it now

Even in his first weeks at Ituano FC, his coaches were aware that Gabriel Martinelli had lofty goals for his career.

“When he arrived here, we were told that he was 'the boy with the project,'” says Luiz Antonio. He describes a young man who was “very focused, very determined” in his approach, despite his tender years.

“He was very ambitious and showed that element of his personality in so many ways. He likes to push himself to the maximum, straining for excellence at all times. He would be annoyed to lose a training game, for example. Some players in Brazil still have a lot to learn when it comes to competitiveness and high standards, but not Gabriel.”

Read my piece on Arsenal's young starlet on The Athletic.

Burnt by his first European adventure, Gabigol is restoring his reputation in Brazil, the only way he knows how

If you've watched Flamengo recently, you'll have notice the placards, lovingly whipped up at kitchen tables around the city with felt-tip feeling.

“Hoje tem gol do Gabigol,” they read. Gabigol is going to score today.

He probably is, you know, but we’ll return to that in a moment. Because chances are that you’ve heard that name before. Maybe you played Football Manager five or six years ago. Maybe you really, really wanted to know who the next cab off the Santos academy rank was going to be.

Chances are, too, that you lost sight of his immense potential shortly afterwards. That would be perfectly excusable. For a while, he lost sight of it himself.

Now, though? Now he's back in the groove.

Read my piece on Gabigol's renaissance at Flamengo on The Athletic.

A Tricolor love story: What Daniel Alves' return means for São Paulo – and for Brazilian football as a whole

São Paulo is a club with a proud history, but recent years have been difficult and the last couple of weeks have felt faintly surreal.

It would be one thing to sign a player of Daniel Alves' calibre, with 41 senior titles to his name – more than any other player in the world – and a global cachet that stretches beyond that of the entire league, let alone one team.

It is another for that player to be quite so plainly overjoyed with his decision, to be doe-eyed and doting like a teenage in the throes of his first crush.

Read my piece on Alves' homecoming on The Athletic. 

The Lucas Moura conundrum: Can the Tottenham star finally start to explore the outer reaches of his potential?

“To be, or not to be a superstar: that is the question.”

It was a good question seven years later, when Lucas Moura was profiled in Placar magazine, and it is still a good one today.

For the forward, now almost a decade into his career at senior level, continues to tiptoe the line between seven-out-of-ten solidity and something altogether more special. There have been flirtations with the outer reaches of his vast potential, but nothing sustained, no full-blown romance.

Is this season his best opportunity to finally take off? I look at that possibility in my latest for The Athletic.

Edu Gaspar is a man of substance as well as style. This is what he will bring to Arsenal as technical director

Composure, communication skills and the quiet inner confidence that comes only from a mastery of the facts at hand: these have been the foundations of Edu Gaspar’s second career.

The ingredients for a charmed life, too, for the 41-year-old has enjoyed remarkable success since swapping the midfield engine room for the boardroom.

Corinthians enjoyed the most fertile five-year spell in club history with Edu as director of football; his time in a similar role with the Brazil national team culminated in their first Copa America title since 2007.

You can be sure that Arsenal have not made Edu their first-ever technical director for sentimental reasons. And while his urbane charm and sharp suits do him no harm in the public-image stakes, to gauge opinion in his homeland is to be left in no doubt that he is a man of substance, too.

Read the rest of this piece over at The Athletic.

(And until the end of the month, you can get 50% off your first year using this link.)

The Little Onion makes a big impact: How Everton has brought life and levity to Brazil's Copa América campaign

Everton was Brazil’s best player against Peru last night. He was arguably their best player against Venezuela on Tuesday, too, despite only coming on in the second half. He has two goals in the competition and a legion of new fans. But they don’t chant his actual name when he scores.

Instead, they chant, “É Cebolinha!” – “It’s Little Onion!”

This, obviously, is brilliant. A little research reveals that Everton does indeed look a lot like Cebolinha, a character in a much-loved kids’ TV show. Mainly it’s that little tuft of hair, perched on top of his head like it was retreating to higher ground. Maybe Everton also mixes his Rs and Ls up in speech to hilarious effect.

More pertinently, there is just a lovely cartoon levity to the way the 23-year-old plays football, all jerky bursts of life and laugh-out-loud punchlines. It is this quality that has, in double-quick time, made him the chief attacking catalyst for this work-in-progress Brazil side.

Read my piece on the man of the moment over at The Independent. 

Can Philippe Coutinho fill the Neymar void and inspire Brazil to glory at the Copa América?

Filling Neymar’s boots in the Brazil team is one of the great Sisyphean tasks in modern sport, up there with being Deontay Wilder’s sparring partner or doing PR for Team Sky. Boil the Seleção to a sticky liquor and it basically is Neymar, with all the wonders and warts that entails.

Ahead of the Copa América opener against Bolivia there had been a few rogue missives, whispered into the wind, to the effect that Brazil could even be better off without their quicksilver prince. This is plainly nonsense, at least from a pure sporting point of view: he is this country’s best footballer by a country mile.

Coutinho is an excellent player, but not on the same level. He hasn’t even been at his own level this season, with his struggles at Barcelona well documented. Nor does he offer anything like the same raw, gravitational star power that Neymar does; in fact, he is really best viewed as the anti-Neymar. If the Paris Saint-Germain forward is the very model of a modern major superstar, Coutinho is a quiet man squinting into the spotlight.

He is, however, one of Brazil's great hopes at this summer's Copa América, as I wrote in my opening-night piece from the Morumbi over at The Independent.

Gabriel Jesus interview: 'I didn't know anything about England. Fernandinho was like my godfather'

It can be easy to lose sight of the human factor that lies beyond the broad strokes that make up a footballer's CV.

The costs, the sacrifices, the challenges that come with upping sticks and moving halfway across the globe... these don't appear on a player's Wikipedia page, but they're in the background, shaping everything.

Gabriel Jesus, who was just a teenager when he left Brazil to pursue his dream, is well-placed to comment on the culture shock that such a move entails. "I was 19 years old, in another country with a different culture and a different language," he recalls. "I didn't know anything. It would have been difficult if it wasn't for the people helping me."

I interviewed Jesus about his adaptation to life in England, pizza, living in Manchester and Palmeiras. You can read it over at Bleacher Report.

The best youngsters emerging from Brazil, including 'Little Onion', a classic No.9 and the second coming of Ramires

Scouts have to act fast these days, especially those working in Brazil.

Two of the country's most impressive young talents have already agreed big-money deals: Flamengo’s Lucas Paquetá is on his way to AC Milan, and Rodrygo, the latest teen sensation to come through the ever-reliable Santos system, will eventually move to Real Madrid.

But there is still plenty of potential in the Brasileirão if some of the European big boys decide to go shopping in January.

I pick out five of the best up-and-coming talents in my latest for Unibet.