When Richarlison made his move from Fluminense to Watford last summer, there were several stories in the press about his tough childhood in Brazil.
The player doesn’t mind talking about the dangerous places he grew up in, and gave many interviews recalling the day he had a gun pointed at his head.
Maybe Everton fans didn’t read many of these interviews at the time, and now that Richarlison got his first call up to play for Brazil, he’s back in the spotlight in his home country’s media.
That’s why UOL interviewed people who saw him growing up, and brought some interesting stories from before his time as a professional footballer.
Fidel Carvalho, Richarlison’s first futsal coach, talked about his early days as a player.
“He cleaned lots, helped his uncle at night in a cafeteria next to an university… One day the coach that helped me got him job as a bricklayer assistant. He went one day, but on the other, he told the coach that it was very heavy and that he would be a football player,” Carvalho told UOL.
“We lived in the northern part of the state, which is 250km from the capital. When we went to play there, we would leave at five in the morning, carrying food in Styrofoam box. We would arrive close to the time of the game, however, all were always happy. Also there was a day when we went to the final with eight kids in a Gol. He went in the trunk. We played and we were champions.”
“One day, I took him to a club in the city so he could use the swimming pool, he didn’t have the money to eat there, so a club boy challenged him in a swimming contest, worth a snack. He, as he always lived free, knew how to swim like no one else. He won the bet easily and the boy had to pay the snack.”
Régis Masarin, one of the first to work with Richarlison in a football pitch, tells that the player almost gave up on playing when he was released from Figueirense on his birthday.
“He came down and told me that he wanted to stop. We talked for a long time and I insisted that he continued, and that as soon as he could, he would get a test at another club. He lived a time at Real Noroeste, but got discouraged again. In the meantime, we got a test for him in América-MG, where he stood out and went to the professionals.”
It was at América-MG that Richarlison caught Fluminense’s attention. The rest of this story, and beginning of the current Everton chapter, we all know.
