Rodrigo – an Evertonian Enigma

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Everton fan George Roberts tries to get to the bottom of Rodrigo’s short-lived Toffees career…

Poor Rodrigo.

Not the most fashionable outfit in the Premier League (not that it ever stopped Middlesbrough), Everton’s first foray into the Brazilian transfer market was an unmitigated failure. Rodrigo Juliano arrived from Botafogo in the summer of 2002 on a curious £1.25 million temporary deal with an option for a permanent move at another £3 million.

The author, despite being a Blues fan himself, can remember nothing about Rodrigo.  Internet sources on Rodrigo are equally sketchy. But for his brief Wikipedia page, you could be forgiven for doubting his existence. A bit of Googling brings us to a fansite, Everton-Mad.  Austin Rathe, musing about a preseason game against Wrexham in August 2002, wrote:

‘My betting is that it will be Gravesen and Rodrigo as our two central midfielders, but it is as of yet unclear exactly how fit the Brazilian is.’

This would soon become very clear. Continue reading

Wayne Rooney’s Legacy Marches On Against His Own Will

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Following another drawn-out saga, Jon Wilmore comments on the Wayne Rooney situation…

If he’s happy, he’s got a funny way of showing it. But for Wayne Rooney, happiness does not appear to be an essential quality. Its absence from his working life has done nothing to neuter his rampant return to form. It’s a curious contradiction for a man so heralded as the archetypal lover-of-the-game, but perhaps that’s just it – so great is his love for football that he is utterly ambivalent as to where he’s playing it. Continue reading

Gilberto Silva – Arsenal’s ‘Invisible Wall’

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Andrew Allen, founder of The Arsenal Collective and deputy editor of Arseblog News, profiles the legendary Gilberto Silva – the ‘Invisible Wall’ who became ‘Invincible’…

In an informal interview conducted seven years ago with his own unofficial fan site, Gilberto Silva was asked what advice he’d pass on to his younger self should the chance hypothetically present itself. Before answering he can be seen pausing for thought before quietly asserting in his delightfully lilting English, “Believe.”

The simplicity of his statement can’t help but make you smile. After all, this is a guy whose path to the top was not so much the stuff of dreams, but a fairy-tale so far-fetched that even the Brothers Grimm might have raised an eyebrow. Continue reading

Football Manager and the Rise of Football’s Lost ‘Wonderkids’

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Ethan Meade returns to The False Nine fold with a look at why some of Football Manager‘s most notable wonderkids failed to justify their early hype in the real world…

“I was the most wanted kid in England at 14 and I became arrogant with it. I thought, “I’ve made it, I’m the best player in the world, and no one can talk to me”

The shelf life of a footballer is a remarkably short one. Players can be a hero one week and a villain the next; just ask Cherno Samba. Rated as a 14 year old as the player who was set to spearhead England’s 2006 World Cup hopes, by 2008, he’d been released by Plymouth Argyle. Samba’s story is an all too common one in the modern world of football scouting, of over-exposure at a young age, and missed opportunities.

Samba rose to prominence as a 13 year-old in 1998, when he scored 132 goals in 32 games for St Joseph’s Academy in Blackheath. With agents already swirling around the youngster from Peckham – his father claims one agent offered him £25,000 to represent his son – Samba began training at Millwall. It was at the age of 14, that amid interest from a number of top clubs, Liverpool allegedly offered Millwall £2 million for the trainee. He went on a week-long trial at the Anfield giants, and a week later, took a phone call from Michael Owen, advising him to sign on at the Anfield club. Continue reading

Edu – Brazilian Invincible and fan favourite

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“His name is short, he’s got a fake passport! Edu, Edu!”

Tom Sweetman, writer for ESPN FC, remembers Edu…

Edu left Arsenal in the summer of 2005 a fan favourite, an important member of Arsene Wenger’s squad and with two league titles and three FA Cups to his name. The midfielder arrived, however, as quite a different entity altogether.

Rewind to just four years earlier, April of 2001 to be precise, and the Brazilian was making just his second start for the Gunners since arriving from Corinthians that January. The venue was the much-missed, but never forgotten, Highbury, and high-flying Arsenal were taking on lowly Middlesbrough. Inside 34 minutes, Edu had turned the ball into the back of his own net. Now, take a step back again three months earlier, where at Leicester, the very same player was forced off the Filbert Street pitch, and to end his debut prematurely, due to injury, just 15 minutes after initially coming on as a substitute. Continue reading

Fumaça: The first ever Brazilian ‘non-footballer’

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Michael Hudson, from The Accidental Groundhopper, looks back on one of Newcastle’s worst ever players – Fumaça…

One of Mick Wadsworth’s fin de siècle plethora of unsuccessful South American signings, José Rodriguez Alves Antunes – better known as Fumaça or the first ever Brazilian non-footballer- arrived at Newcastle United in September 1999 by the circuitous route of Catuense, Colchester United, Barnsley and Crystal Palace.

The midfielder had already failed to make an impression on Birmingham City, Watford or Derby County, and though he had been offered a contract at Grimsby, Cleethorpes evidently hadn’t done enough to make an impression upon him. Eventually signed by Colchester United, he played fourteen minutes of a televised Division Two game against Manchester City before being knocked unconscious by a visiting defender and spending the next two days in hospital.  He never played again in Essex, Colchester manager Mick Wadsworth moving to Palace on a weekly contract as Steve Coppell’s assistant before taking on a permanent job under Sir Bobby Robson at St James’ Park. Wherever Wadsworth went, the nomadic Fumaça  – once laughably touted as “the best non-capped Brazilian player” – followed.  Think George and Lennie in Of Mice and Men, but with football agents standing in for that lynch mob in Weed. Continue reading

Sylvinho: Arsenal’s First Brazilian

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Tom Sweetman, writer for ESPN FC, profiles the first Brazilian at Highbury – Sylvinho…

Sylvinho’s last-minute screamer away to Chelsea in 2000 will always be the overarching memory of any Arsenal fan when it comes to the Brazilian left-back. But ultimately in the wider scale of things, as good as that goal was, the point that it rescued has little significance in the history of the Gunners. The same can be said of the player himself.

Arriving from Corinthians in June of 1999 for £4 million, Sylvinho certainly caused some excitement among the ranks of the Arsenal faithful. Brought in by Arsene Wenger as the long-term successor to Nigel Winterburn, the marauding left-back took little time to make an impact at Highbury, dislodging the aging Englishman by the turn of the millennium. Sylvinho had it all in his locker: pace to burn, a never-ending engine that would see him get up and down the flank all day long. He could attack, defend, and made the overlapping run look like an art form. He was very much the modern full-back, the antithesis to Winterburn and Lee Dixon; the future of Arsenal. Continue reading