When Endrick scored his first goal for Brazil at the Bernabéu on Tuesday, he celebrated a little and immediately went to the north end to look for someone. He followed the instructions of several people until he found a man with whom he hugged very effusively. It was his father, Douglas. That goal represented the end of an amazing journey that, after going through the most inhospitable catacombs of football, and even hunger, had deposited them there, in that moment of absolute happiness that is a goal, in the most exuberant stadium in the world. world, just four days after he had scored at Wembley, another temple, against England.

Four months before he turned 18 and could, therefore, finally join Real Madrid, which hired him in December 2022, he began to conquer his future home just five minutes after coming on to replace Raphinha in the match against Spain. The young man, for whom it paid around 60 million euros, is one of the club’s riskiest bets in its policy of attracting emerging talent, after the rise of Vinicius and Rodrygo, and that Reinier, currently at Frosinone, has not come close to performing at that level.

He did not have a moment in Madrid close to Endrick’s joy at the Bernabéu, the pinnacle in football, that distant horizon to which the family has aimed for at least two decades. His father, with whom he hugged after the goal, had started trying when he was 15, as the footballer said a few days ago in The Players Tribune (TPT): “He left home and hitchhiked from Brasilia to São Paulo. He did half the journey walking along the road,” he said. “His plan was to try out with all the important clubs in the city. It took him a whole week to arrive.” But his dream didn’t even take off. When he arrived in São Paulo he was so tired that he missed the Nacional AC trials because he fell asleep. He had so little that he spent one rainy night sheltering under the eaves of the ticket offices at the Palmeiras stadium, the club where his son still plays.

They returned home and somehow football continued tracing the path that took them to the north end of the Bernabéu on Tuesday. Douglas met Endrick’s mother when they both worked cleaning the floors of the Mané Garrincha stadium in Brasilia, as Thiago Freitas, director of operations at Roc Nation, the player’s representation agency, recalls: “It’s a very nice story,” he says.

Freitas met Endrick in July 2020, five days before the boy turned 14, younger than when his father embarked on his adventure to São Paulo. By then, he had already been on their list of interesting promises for a few months: “At 13 years old, he was playing in the under-14 and under-15 competitions and we had seen him on video. In January 2020, we saw him in an under-15 tournament, the EFIPAN Cup, in Rio Grande do Sul, and we classified him as extra class, a more than generational player,” he recalls. A few months later, a person who knew the family took them to Freitas’ office.

hungry nights

At that time, the fortunes of the family, which had gone through extreme times, began to turn. “We were always hustling with the minimum,” the soccer player remembers on TPT. “Dad says I would sit on the couch and tell him, ‘Don’t worry. “I’m going to be a footballer, and I’m going to get a better life for us.” A few weeks later, Endrick traveled with his mother to São Paulo, that failed journey of his father’s, to enter the Palmeiras academy. They lived on the edge: “I asked Mom if she had anything to eat, and she answered: ‘Go to sleep, Endrick. Sleep will take away your hunger.”

A few months later their father joined them, who got a job as a cleaner at the Palmeiras stadium, the one in whose locker he had taken shelter from the rain one night.

But Freitas had detected a special talent capable of getting him out of there: “Illusionists say: ‘Every trick is simple.’ But we say that trick is magical because we don’t know how he does it. These players are like illusionists. “Endrick is a special footballer because of this,” he explains. “When I saw Endrick, I told Frederico Pena (Vinicius’ agent) that I had found a boy with two hearts: one that beats at 180 beats per minute and another that beats at 40. He has the explosion, the strength, the starts from Ronaldo Nazario. Like a rhinoceros. But when he goes to finish, he finishes like Hugo Sánchez, like Romario, with coldness and subtlety.”

The goals he scored at Wembley and at the Bernabéu are a reflection of those two hearts. In the first, he accompanied Vinicius on the run when the number 7 went alone towards the goalkeeper, in an action in which no teammate usually follows him. Endrick endured the gallop and when the goalkeeper repelled Vinicius’ shot, he sent the rebound into the net. In the goal against Spain he first volleyed a ball that fell after a corner kick: a clinical shot.

By the time he returns to play at the Bernabéu, already in white, Freitas believes he will need some adjustment: “In Brazil, the spaces are clearer, the game is more predictable,” he says. “Endrick is going to have to play more with his mind and not just his strength and his body.” But he is not worried that the competition from Vinicius, Rodrygo, Bellingham and the expected Mbappé could leave him on the sidelines: “Until now, when he has been faced with a challenge, he has overcome it. We have to wait and see what happens. We don’t know what Endrick is capable of because he hasn’t been subjected to all the tests yet.”

While that point arrives, the agency tries to take advantage of the moment to build the leg of the footballer’s commercial image, which is taken care of by Fábio Wolff, who was convinced to work for a teenager by showing him the video of a goal he had scored from the midfield. To do so, the examples of other Brazilian footballers did not serve as a guide: “There are many sad stories, like Robinho in jail.” He was inspired by other sports: “Rafa Nadal. He is one of the best players ever, and off the court he is a lord. I looked at Rafa, Roger Federer and Cristiano Ronaldo, who Endrick likes. Nadal has one contract with Nike and eight others with other brands. Something organic. With this premise, we began to develop Endrick’s strategic plan.”

With that construction underway, on Tuesday he began to build something even more essential at the Bernabéu, where the president of Madrid, Florentino Pérez, later came to look for him: “Well, we’ll wait for you here,” he said before asking him for the match shirt. to Rodrygo.

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