PAIN FIRMINO POVERTY BRIBERY AND GLORY
There are good trials, there are great trials, and then there are the kind of trials that Roberto Firmino enjoyed at Figueirense in 2007.
The 16-year-old had come 2,000 miles from the crime-infested city of Maceio on Brazil’s eastern tip – and with him was a dentist.
Dental surgeon Marcellus Portella had been working as part of the team at CRB, a club in Brazil’s second division, when he stopped to watch Firmino playing for one of their youth teams. He liked what he had seen, and immediately offered to represent the starlet. With his assistance, Portella said, Firmino could earn enough cash to move his family out of their impoverished neighbourhood someday (as of 2018, Maceio’s murder rate ranked it 21st among the world’s most dangerous cities).
Portella began trying to get Firmino noticed, and he connected CRB youth coach Toninho Almeida with Luciano ‘Bilu’ Lopes – a Maceio native and experienced pro at Atletico Mineiro. Bilu helped to plan a trial at Sao Paulo, which didn’t go well, and another at Figueirense. As sporting director Erasmo Damiani remembers, Firmino did the rest.
“Roberto scored two overhead kicks within half an hour of his first training session in the morning,” he tells FourFourTwo with a smile.
“The under-17 coach, Hemerson Maria, soon rushed to my room, urging us to keep hold of him. The same thing happened later in the afternoon with the under-20 coach, Rogerio Micale. ‘If Hemerson doesn’t take him, I want this kid with my team,’ he insisted. That’s how talented Roberto was.”
AROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHTY CLUBS
Firmino was signed on the spot, as Figueirense were finalising preparations ahead of Brazil’s 2008 domestic campaign. Between January and May, the club would be competing in the Campeonato Catarinense, a regional
