Dear eight-year-old Ronaldinho,
Tomorrow, when you come home from playing
football, there will be a lot of people in your house. Your uncles, friends of
your family and some other people you won’t recognize will be in the kitchen.
At first, you’ll think you’re just late for the party. Everybody’s there to
celebrate the 18th birthday of your brother, Roberto.
Usually when you come home from football, mom is always laughing
or joking around.
But this time, she’ll be crying.
And then you will see Roberto. He will put his
arm around you and bring you inside the bathroom so you can be alone. Then he
will tell you something you won’t understand.
“There was an accident. Dad is gone. He died.”
It won’t make sense to you. What does that mean? When is he coming
back? How could dad be gone?
Dad was the one who told you play creatively on the football
pitch, the one who told you to play with a free style — to just play with
the ball. He believed in you more than anyone. When Roberto started playing
professional football for Grêmio last year, Dad told everyone, “Roberto is
good, but watch his younger brother coming up.”
Dad was a superhero. He loved football so much
that even after working at the shipyard during the week, he would work security
at Grêmio’s stadium on the weekend. How could you never see him again? You
won’t understand what Roberto is telling you.
You’re not going to feel sadness right away.
That will come later. A few years from now, you will accept that Dad is never
coming back on earth. But what I want you to understand is that every time you
have a ball at your feet, Dad will be with you.
When you have a football at your feet, you are
free. You are happy. It’s almost like you are hearing music. That feeling will
make you want to spread joy to others.
You are lucky because you have Roberto. Even
though he’s 10 years older and already playing for Grêmio, Roberto will be
there for you always. He won’t just be a brother, he will become like a father
to you. And more than anything, he’ll be your hero.
You’ll want to play like him, you’ll want to
be like him. Every morning, when you head to Grêmio — you will play for the
youth side, while Roberto plays for the senior team — you’ll get to walk into
the locker room with your big brother, the football star. And every night, when
you go to bed, you’ll think, I
get to share a room with my idol.
There are no posters on the walls in the
bedroom you share, there’s only a small TV. It won’t matter anyway, because you
won’t have time to watch any matches together. When he’s not traveling for
matches, Roberto is taking you outside to play more football.
Where you live in Porto Alegre, there are
drugs and gangs and that kind of stuff around. It’s going to be tough, but as
long as you are playing football — on the street, at the park, with your dog —
you will feel safe.
Yes, I said your
dog, by
the way. He’s a tireless defender.
You’ll play with Roberto. You’ll play with
other kids and older guys at the park. But eventually everyone will get tired —
and you will want to keep playing. So make sure you always take your dog,
Bombom, out with you. Bombom is a mutt. A real Brazilian dog. And even
Brazilian dogs love football. He’ll be great practice for dribbling and skills
… and maybe the first casualty of the “Elastico.”
Years from now, when you are playing in Europe, a few defenders
will remind you of Bombom.
Childhood is going to be very different for
you. By the time you’re 13, people will have started talking about you. They’ll
talk about your skills and what you’re able to do with a ball. At this time,
football is still just a game to you. But in 1994, when you are 14, the World
Cup will show you that football is more than just a simple game.
July 17, 1994, is a day every Brazilian
remembers. On that day, you’ll be traveling with the Grêmio youth team for a
match in Belo Horizonte. The World Cup final is on TV, and it’ll be Brazil
against Italy. Yes, that’s right, the Canarinho will
be in a World Cup final for the first time in 24 years. The whole country will
seem to stop.
Everywhere in Belo Horizonte, there will be Brazilian flags. There
will be no colors except green and yellow that day. Every single spot in the
city will have the match turned on and be filled with people.
You’ll be watching with your teammates. The
final whistle will blow with the score tied 0–0. The game will go to a penalty
shootout.
Italy misses their first PK, and so does
Brazil. Then Italy scores. And then … Romario steps up. His shot curves to the
left … hits the post … and flies in the goal. The guys on the team are
screaming and yelling.
Italy scores and there’s silence again.
Branco scores for Brazil … Taffarel makes a
save for Brazil … Dunga scores for Brazil.…
Then, the moment that will not just change
your life, but the lives of millions of Brazilians.…
Baggio steps up to the spot for Italy and
misses.
Brazil are World Cup champions.
During the crazy celebration, it’s going to
become clear to you what you want to do for the rest of your life. You’re
going to finally realize what football means to Brazilians. You’re going to
feel the power of this sport. Most importantly, you will see the happiness that
football can bring to regular people.
“I’m going to play for Brazil,” you’ll tell yourself that day.
Not everyone is going to believe in you,
especially with the way you play.
There will be some coaches — alright, one in
particular — who will tell you not to play the way you do. He will think you
need to be more serious, that you need to stop dribbling so much. “You’ll never
in your life make it as a footballer,” he’ll say.
Use those words as motivation. Use them to keep
you focused. And then think about the players who did play
the game beautifully — Dener, Maradona, Ronaldo.
Think about what Dad said, to play free and to
just play with
the ball. Play with joy. This is something that many coaches will not
understand, but when you are on the pitch, you will never calculate. Everything
will come naturally. Before you have time to think, your feet have already made
a decision.
Creativity will take you further than
calculation.
One day, just a few months after you watch Romario
lift the ’94 World Cup, your coach at Grêmio is going to pull you into his
office after training. He’ll tell you that you’ve been called up to the
Brazilian under-17 national team. When you get to the training camp in
Teresópolis, you will see something that you will never forget: When you walk
into the cafeteria, you’ll notice the framed photos hanging on the walls —
Pelé, Zico, Bebeto.
You’ll be walking the same halls as those
legends. You’ll sit at the same cafeteria tables that Romario, Ronaldo and
Rivaldo sat in. You’ll eat the same food they ate. You’ll sleep in the same
dorms they slept in. When you put your head down to sleep, your last thought
will be, I
wonder which of my heroes slept on this pillow, too.
For the next four years, you will do nothing
but play football. You will spend your life on buses and training pitches. In
fact, from 1995 to 2003, you will never take a vacation. It will be very
intense.
But when you turn 18, you will
achieve something your father would have been very proud of. You will make your
debut for Grêmio’s senior team. The only sad part is that Roberto won’t be
there. A knee injury will cut his time at Grêmio short and he’ll go to
Switzerland to play. You won’t get to share the pitch with your hero, but
you’ve spent so many years watching Roberto that you’ll know what to do and how
to act.
On match days, you’ll walk
through the car park where your father used to work security on the weekends.
You’ll enter the dressing room where your brother used to take you as a kid.
You’ll pull on the blue and black Grêmio shirt. You’ll think: Life
can’t get any better than this. You’ll think you have finally made it,
playing for your hometown club.
But this is not where your
story ends.
The next year, you will play
your first senior match with the Brazilian national team. A funny thing will
happen. You will actually show up to your first training camp a day later than
your teammates. Why? You’ll be delayed by a match with Grêmio in the final of
the Campeonato Gaúcho tournament against Internacional.
Playing for Internacional will
be the captain of the ’94 World Cup team, Dunga.
You will play very well in this
match. So when you arrive to the pitch for your first day of training with
Brazil, your new teammates — the guys you watched win the ’94 World Cup — will
be talking about one player: the small kid wearing number 10.
They’ll be talking about you.
They’ll be talking about how
you dribbled past Dunga. They’ll be talking about your title-winning goal. But
don’t get too confident, because they’re not going to go easy on you. This will
be the most important moment of your life. When you get to this level, people
will expect many things of you.
Will you keep playing your way?
Or will you start to calculate?
Will you play it safe?
The only advice I have to give you is this: Do it your way. Be
free. Hear the music. This is the only way for you to live your life.
Playing for Brazil will change your life. All
of a sudden, doors you never even knew were available to you will start to open.
You’ll start to think about playing in Europe,
where a lot of your heroes went to prove themselves. Ronaldo will tell you
about life in Barcelona. You’ll see his awards, his Ballon d’Or, his club
trophies. Suddenly, you’ll want to make history too. You will start to dream
beyond Grêmio. In 2001, you will sign with Paris Saint-Germain.
How can I tell a kid who was born in a wooden
house in a favela what life will be like in Europe? It’s impossible. You will
not understand, even if I tell you. From the time you leave for Paris, then
Barcelona, then Milan, everything will go by very, very fast. Some of the media
in Europe will not understand your style of play. They will not understand why
you are always smiling.
Well, you are smiling because football is fun.
Why would you be serious? Your goal is to spread joy. I’ll say it again —
creativity over calculation.
Stay free, and you’ll win a World Cup for
Brazil.
Stay free, and you’ll win the Champions
Leagues, La Liga and Serie A.
Stay free, and you’ll win a Ballon d’Or.
What you’ll be most proud of, though, is
helping to change football in Barcelona through your style of play. When you
arrive there, Real Madrid will be the power of Spanish football. By the time
you leave the club, kids will be dreaming of playing “the Barcelona way.”
Listen to me, though. Your role in this will
be about much more than what you do on the pitch.
At Barcelona, you’ll hear about this kid on the youth team. He
wears number 10 like you. He’s small like you. He plays with
the ball like you. You and your teammates will go watch him play for
Barcelona’s youth squad, and at that moment you’ll know he’s going to be more
than a great footballer. The kid is different. His name is Leo Messi.
You’ll tell the coaches to bring him up to
play with you on the senior side. When he arrives, the Barcelona players will
be talking about him like the Brazilian players were talking about you.
I want you to give him one piece of advice.
Tell him, “Play with happiness. Play free.
Just play with
the ball.”
Even when you are gone, the free style will
live on in Barcelona through Messi.
A lot will happen in your life, good and bad.
But everything that happens, you will owe to football. When people question
your style, or why you smile after you lose a match, I want you to think of one
memory.
When your father leaves this earth, you won’t
have any movies of him. Your family doesn’t have much money, so your parents
don’t own a video camera. You won’t be able to hear your father’s voice, or
hear him laughing again.
But among his possessions, there is one thing
you’ll always have to remember him by. It’s a photo of you and him playing
football together. You are smiling, happy — with the ball at your feet. He is
happy watching you.
When the money comes — and the pressure, and
the critics — stay free.
Play as he told you to play.
Play with the
ball.
—Ronaldinho
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