Bare earth where genius flourished

Owen Slot, chief sports reporter, and Marc Aspland, chief sports photographer, report from Porto Alegre in Brazil, the spiritual home of Barcelona's footballing superstar

On Tuesday last week, we found Pelézinho (“Little Pelé” — his older brother, like countless Brazilians, is known as Pelé) and Tinga (named after a local player), both from Escola Alberto Torres, Ronaldinho’s old school, practising so that they can be like him. The groundsman smiles a slightly toothless grin. He remembers watching Ronaldinho here. Only last weekend, he says, Ronaldinho’s uncle was playing in a match here. “Uncle Miquimba,” he explains, is 50 and still possesses a mesmerising “elastico”. He mimes a stepover. “If you could see him,” he says, “your jaws would drop.”

Miquimba is a legendary figure in these parts. Some call Ronaldinho the best in the world, others here have argued that he is not even the best in his family. Miquimba drank his way out of a professional career, but he is still fit to lead the family football team and being one of 13 siblings, there were plenty of recruits.

Most of the siblings still live here, around the Marques Do Marica, the street where Ronaldinho grew up. Vila Nova, the suburb, has been described inaccurately as a “favela”; it is certainly poor, the houses basic and the streets only recently covered in tarmac, but it is no slum. It was here that Ronaldinho’s grandfather formed the family football team that attained such notoriety that opposition teams would travel from out of town to play them. Ronaldinho turned out for them when he was young. Apparently, they are pretty good without him.

“You must tell the world that Vila Nova is beautiful,” his proud aunt, Conceição, says. “Tell them about the party, too.” This was nearly four years ago, the party that started as a chicken barbecue when Brazil won the World Cup but went all through the night and the next day. “All Vila Nova came here,” she says. “I’ve never seen so many chickens in my life.”

So mark the Marques Do Marica as the other birthplace of Ronaldinho’s amazing talent. “He was always playing here in the street,” Conceição says. “The only time he wasn’t playing football, he was playing samba.” The last time he was here, though, was on his return from that World Cup. “The crowd was so vast that he couldn’t leave,” she says. “He can’t come here any more.”

The only place left for him in his home town is his private palace, ten minutes away, which comes with its own football pitch, a hall that can hold a party for 300 and blanket security. “When he is in Porto Alegre, I go to see him at his home,” Conceição says. What she really wants is to see him in Europe. “I’ve never been out of Brazil,” she says. “It is my dream to see him play for Barcelona, or in the World Cup. I have my passport ready. I’m ready to go.”

But to suggest that he has left bitterness or animosity in his wake could not be more wrong. A voyage through this young man’s life story reveals a pride and affection for him of incredible warmth.

The barest facts are rooted in tragedy. His father, João de Assis Moreira, worked in the shipyards and also as an attendant at Grêmio, one of the city’s two big clubs. The family lived in Vila Nova until his older brother, Roberto de Assis (known here as Assis), started to attract attention as a professional player. It was when Torino started making overtures to Assis that Grêmio bought the family a smarter house with a swimming pool as a sweetener to stay. When Ronaldinho was 8, however, his father had a heart attack in the pool and died.

It cannot have helped that, as a result, his mother then had to go out to work, selling cosmetics, although it was not long before the young boy was taken under the wing of one of his first coaches, Cleon Espinoza. “Myself and the other fathers in the team used to take him to the beach, to barbecues, to our houses,” Espinoza said. “We tried to look after him. I thought that the best way to stop Ronaldinho thinking about his father was by having him play football.”

Espinoza would not stake any claim to a paternal role. That was played by Assis, who is admired by many for his contribution to his brother’s upbringing. His own career was ruined by injury, but to this day, Assis remains Ronaldinho’s agent, adviser and closest friend.

When asked about his father, Ronaldinho says that he is motivated to fulfil the unwavering faith the old man had in him. There is something of the late Earl Woods — father of Tiger, the world’s No 1 golfer — in the predictions left by João. When Assis was establishing himself as Grêmio’s star player, João would claim with certainty that his younger son would be better still.

On the touchline of the Grêmio academy, which Ronaldinho joined when he was seven, other fathers would warm to João — after all, he was the father of the great Assis — but they were consumed by jealousy for Ronaldinho. “Comparing their sons to Ronaldinho would drive them mad,” José Alzir Flores, his first academy coach, says.

“Some of them paid the newspapers to write that their boys were better than Ronaldinho.”

But the boys themselves loved their team-mate. Indeed, despite the loss of his father, his exuberance appears to be his hallmark. Behind Grêmio’s Stadio Olympico is the training field, at one end of which is a bar run for 30 years by Elizabeth Pires, known to all as Aunt Bete.

Even before he could see over the counter, Ronaldinho would help Aunt Bete in the bar, and he would help himself to the odd peach juice, too, but the mere mention of his name has her face lighten and eyes moisten.

“My son, my son!” she says. “I love him. Even when he was famous, he would help me in the same way.” And she recalls adoringly how, when Ronaldinho scored at her end of the training ground, he would shout out to her: “Aunt Bete! I scored a beautiful goal. That must be worth a Coke!”

Similarly dewy-eyed is Pedrao — Big Pete — the Grêmio security chief. “Ronaldinho always used to play with the ballboys after training,” he says, “even when it was raining. At Christmas he used to give everyone hampers. The other players sometimes gave presents but he never forgot. And once, when I was building my house, I told him in passing that I needed to pay the builders. The next day, he turned up in person and paid for all the building materials himself. To this day, I still don’t know how much I owe him.”

But the key to the man, of course, is his football and there are fascinating lessons here of how it was honed. “When he joined us,” Flores explains, “he was very thin but his technique was so good that he played in an age group above himself. “He was so weak physically, though, that he would always be pushed off the ball, so we coaches always told him not to keep it because he’d be tackled. Before receiving the ball, then, he’d always look to see where the defenders were and where his next pass was going to. I am convinced that this is where his extraordinary perception and awareness comes from. It is partly innate, but when I see him now playing for Barcelona, putting the ball into spaces that no one else has seen, I recognise it from when he was at the academy here.

“And I am convinced that this is also why he is so rarely injured. He still passes the ball before the tackle arrives. He has spent his entire football life escaping the hits.”

Flores has been at the academy 18 years and never seen another youngster so talented. There was one who came close, he says, but who never made it. Espinoza says he has had one other player who did share a similar talent and who was actually a better athlete, but he is now playing for Pelotas in the Brazilian second division. Ask why it was Ronaldinho who made it and they give the same answer: the family unit, the guidance of Assis.

Which may augur well for the future. The Moreira family team plays on and a new generation is now stepping up. Way down the pecking order comes Aunt Conceição’s grandson, Taylor, who is just two, but can balance a ball on the back of his neck. Most notable is Diego, son of Assis, who is 10 years old and, at the Grêmio academy, they say that he is special, better than Assis, not as good Ronaldinho, perhaps, but blessed with his same sunny disposition.

And, to Aunt Bete’s delight, he has already started serving in the bar.

source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/