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 brief history of the 'Olympic goal'

In broad, layman’s terms, you should not be able to score from a corner.

You cannot see more than the thinnest sliver of the goal from your starting position. Even if you manage to direct an effort on target, the penalty box is full of players who are keen – indeed, often desperate – to interrupt the ball’s trajectory. One of them is allowed to use their hands to do so and really, really doesn’t want to be embarrassed.

To say the odds are stacked against the taker is to understate things by an order of magnitude.

That's why the 'Olympic goal' club is so exclusive. It's full of transgressors and mavericks – men and women who have looked common sense in the face and laughed.

Read my piece on this delicious skill – inspired by Leandro Carvalho of Ceará – on The Athletic.

A small step and a giant leap in the battle against homophobia in Brazilian football

Anyone who has played or watched football in Brazil has a homophobia story.

It might be the echoing cry of “viado” from a hateful soul in a nearby seat or from a child who cannot fully grasp its meaning. It might be the morons who treat every goal kick as an opportunity to tell the opposition goalkeeper that he is a “poof” — a refrain for which Brazil’s federation were fined no fewer than five times during qualifying for World Cup 2018.

These are the everyday cases, the ones that have, over the course of many decades, been smuggled into Brazil’s sporting culture under the banner of jocularity. “It’s only a bit of fun,” they’ll tell you. A lot of them will even believe it, too, remaining blissfully unaware that they might be making fellow fans feel uncomfortable or even unwelcome at the stadium.

Read my piece on homophobia in the Brazilian game – and a symbolic first step towards its eradication – 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.

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