For a long time, this blog has been a feed of links to articles I have written elsewhere. The idea was that all my work on Brazil would be in one convenient place. I can no longer be bothered to do that – sorry! – so this will be the last post. Thanks to everyone who read and commented over the years. I'll leave everything up so the next generation of Brazilian football fans can marvel at how sketchy my writing was in 2010. You can read all my stuff on The Athletic and follow me on Twitter.  Bye!  ..read more

Dani Alves turned 37 earlier this year. He has made no secret of his desire to play at World Cup 2022, yet he will be pushing 40 by the time it begins. It is a lot to ask for him to maintain his level until then. This represents a challenge for Brazil in two respects. Most straightforwardly, there just aren’t that many Brazilian right-backs around at the moment. Then there is Alves’ particular interpretation of his position.  He may once have been a rampaging touchline-hugger in the traditional mould, but at Juventus and Paris Saint-Germain especially he took on more creative responsibil ..read more

Thiago Silva is not fulfilling a lifetime ambition by moving to the Premier League.  He made it very clear that he wanted to stay at Paris Saint-Germain this summer, and his hand was forced by Leonardo's desire to refresh the first team at the Parc des Princes. But the move to Chelsea does present him with a series of opportunities: to help guide a young, exciting team; to keep himself in the Brazil conversation until World Cup 2022; to prove, after eight seasons in France, that he could have cut it in any of Europe’s top leagues. And, of course, that PSG were wrong to let him go. Read ..read more

When Richarlison signed his first sponsorship deal with Nike, he did not celebrate or lord it over his team-mates. No, he went back to his dorm room, stuffed his old clothes into a suitcase, then went into town and handed them out to homeless people.  This is just one of the stories I heard from those who know Richarlison best. "He’s just spectacular," one of his former coaches said. "The kind of person who seems to have been designed differently by the big guy up in the sky. I get emotional just talking about him.” Read the rest of this piece, about the giant heart behind Richarlison's ..read more

Football and music have never collided as beautifully as they did in the song “Fio Maravilha”, Jorge Ben's nimble tribute to the Flamengo striker of the same name. I t was the final cut on Side A of “Ben,” one of Jorge Ben’s most beloved albums. Almost 50 years later, it remains a staple of his live show, its sparkle undimmed. Yet the story of Brazil’s greatest football song also contains its share of shade. It is a tale of opportunism and idiocy, of good intentions undone by bad judgment. It forced Jorge Ben, one of his country’s great lyricists, into a hasty rewrite and left a bitter tas ..read more

Sandro Orlandelli, who spent a decade as Arsenal’s man in South America and later reprised that role for Manchester United, is under no illusion that his path into top-level European football would be almost impossible to follow. It is a tale of pluck and persistance, bad English and fuzzy logic, the cogs oiled by the goodwill of strangers. This might also be the only Premier League interview you read this month that references a night spent shivering in a central London shopfront. Now technical coordinator at Red Bull Bragantino back in his homeland, Orlandelli laughs heartily as he tell ..read more

“Botafogo is no place for cowards,” said Ricardo Rotenberg, pointedly. The flirtation between the club and Yaya Touré lasted three months, but that was the end of it. Touré had pledged his future to Vasco da Gama, then turned his back on them, too. But the most interesting part of this twisted novela was not what it says about Touré's career choices, but what it says about the Brazilian game. (Spoiler: nothing good.) Read my piece on the affair on The Athletic.  ..read more

Those who work regularly at the Arsenal training ground see many young prospects come and go but few stick in the memory quite like Wellington Silva Even after his first few training sessions, word began to spread through the club about the boy from Rio with the big smile and the silken touch. "He was, quite simply, the best triallist we’d ever seen," says one insider from that time. But Wellington never appeared for the Arsenal first team. Arsenal did sign him permanently but work permit problems meant him spending several seasons out on loan, drastically impeding his development. “I have ..read more

"He's the new Ronaldo," purred Daniel Alves. "He is going to be one of the greats." High praise indeed, but Gabriel Jesus deserved it. For the first two years of Tite's Brazil stewardship, he looked the striker Brazil had been seeking for a decade. Cut to 2020 and the picture is slightly less clear. Jesus, after some ups and downs, remains an important player, as well as a symbol of the Tite era. Yet he now has significant competition for the central striking berth, much of it from the same small patch of north-west England. For now, Roberto Firmino is the incumbent, having ousted Jesus a ..read more

As a teenager, he was compared to Zico and tipped for superstardom. But now, aged 25, former Flamengo forward Adryan finds himself at a rather lower altitude. After an up-and-down jaunt around Europe, he is back in Brazil – not at one of the country's big clubs, but in the second division. What went wrong for him? Was it a question of talent or attitude? And did that 'new Zico' tag weigh heavily on his young shoulders? Answers to those questions on more in a piece with Leeds United correspondent Phil Hay for The Athletic. Read it here.  ..read more