England-Brazil, friendly match between the men’s national football teams played Saturday night, it would have been a mostly negligible match if the Brazilian Endrick hadn’t scored the decisive goal with ten minutes remaining. He is 17 years old, he is a striker for the Brazilian team Palmeiras and in the summer he will move to Real Madrid. Saturday’s match was not his first match with the Brazilian national team, but it was his first in Europe: by scoring less than ten minutes after his arrival on the pitch he partly confirmed the expectations that many have had about him for a couple of years now. his career.
Endrick Felipe Moreira de Sousa, who is only called Endrick, yes he made known in 2022, when he was 15 years old, in a Brazilian youth tournament. Within a few months he made his first team debut and signed a contract for a move to Europe. In Brazil he attracted enormous attention and was indicated by many insiders as the possible new champion of Brazilian football: since then the press, fans and sponsors have accompanied every step of Endrick’s fast career, as had happened in the recent past only for Neymar, more great talent who was early entrusted with the task of leading the national team in the World Cup played on home soil in 2014, and who Brazil particularly cared about.
Those who consider Endrick the next great figure of Brazilian football saw Saturday night’s goal as a confirmation of this thesis. It was not a particularly remarkable goal from an aesthetic or technical point of view: Endrick simply had to weakly touch a ball returned by the English goalkeeper from a shot by Vinícius Júnior and effectively scored into an empty net. But with this goal Endrick became the youngest player ever (17 years and 246 days) to score at Wembley, the historic stadium where the English national team plays its home matches, and the youngest to score a goal for the national team of Brazil since Ronaldo’s time, in 1994: two elements that contributed to enhancing both the goal and his performance.
Endrick was born and lived the first years of his life in Brasilia, the federal capital, a city with limited football tradition. His father was a good footballer, who never made the leap to professionalism, his mother was unemployed: Endrick said he lived a childhood in poverty. He started playing football early, following his father’s example and immediately showing good skills. As often happens in these cases, there are stories circulating about him of great performances from a very young age, against bigger opponents, which are difficult to verify despite his father having documented are YouTube many of his son’s games.
(Photo by Catherine Ivill/Getty Images)
At 11 he moved with his family to São Paulo, where he joined the Palmeiras youth team: his father was guaranteed a job as a cleaner at the sports centre. His skills also became evident at an international level a few years later, when he participated at the age of 15 with Palmeiras in the Copinha, a youth tournament in Sao Paulo reserved for Under 20 teams. Considerably under age, he scored 8 goals in the seven matches of the tournament, winning it and being chosen as the best player. That tournament is always observed very carefully by the big European clubs, who try to find young talents to buy: many began negotiating with Palmeiras to secure the player, who however will only be able to move abroad once he turns 18. age.
Winning the Brazilian championship in 2022 (Photo by Ricardo Moreira/Getty Images)
In December of the same year, 2022, his transfer to Real Madrid was announced. The Spanish team repeated with him a formula that had already worked with two other young Brazilian talents, Vinícius Júnior and Rodrygo, currently among the best players in the world. Both were bought very young and then left to play for at least a year in Brazil, before moving to Europe. For each, the Spanish club had paid a sum of around 45 million euros: a high sum for guys with very little experience, but which proved to be a wise investment. Both Vinícius Júnior and Rodrygo today have higher prices and are regularly decisive for the team, coached by Carlo Ancelotti. According to what was reported in Spanish newspapers, Real Madrid paid 35 million for Endrick, with bonuses that could raise the figure up to 60 (clubs rarely make public the details of the economic agreements for the purchase of players, but the newspapers they almost always find out through their own sources in the clubs).
Endrick tapped waiting for the passage to Europe becoming owner of Palmeiras, winning two Brazilian championships and attracting enormous attention, no longer only from insiders, but also from fans. In particular, one of his overhead kick goals was widely shared on social media, contributing to his rise in the media. After Neymar, Brazil has been waiting for a striker capable of competing with the best in the world for a long time: in recent years Richarlison, Gabriel Jesus and especially Vinícius Júnior have proven to be excellent players, but the expectation on Endrick is higher, due to the great potential shown from a very young age and for the speed of his rise, as is underlined in Brazil.
⚠️ ATTENTION, GOAL ALERT GOING ON YOUR TIMELINE ⚠️#PALxOES | 3×0 #NextGym #CriasDaAcademia pic.twitter.com/pENra02Kzs
— SE Palmeiras (@Palmeiras) January 19, 2022
Such great pressure on such a young boy can also be dangerous. The more or less recent history of Brazilian football is full of young talents who have not lived up to great expectations: Kerlon known as Foquinha, bought by Inter in 2008, and Keirrison, bought by Barcelona in 2009, just to name two cases.
Endrick has already become the spokesperson for a number of companies and products, from a shoe brand to a headache medicine. His commercial relationships are managed by rapper Jay-Z’s Roc Nation agency, which looks after the interests of other famous footballers, he has already ended up on various covers of non-sports newspapers, and has an Instagram profile followed by almost 8 million people . His posts sponsor advertisements, celebratory photos of his successes on the pitch and some private photos alternate: the last two categories are always accompanied by thanks to God. Endrick consistently shows his religiosity, which he shares with his girlfriend, the model and influencer Gabriely Miranda .
Le scarpe di Endrick (Photo by Wagner Meier/Getty Images)
In the coming months Endrick will have to prove that he can handle this pressure, especially starting in the autumn, when he joins Real Madrid, where he will find fierce internal competition. In addition to compatriots Vinícius Júnior and Rodrygo and English attacking midfielder Jude Bellingham, he will most likely be joined in his role by Frenchman Kylian Mbappé, one of the best players in the world. In his short career, Endrick has already faced and overcome a small negative phase (a series of about ten games without scoring a goal) and has shown great ability to improve and a strong will. Compared to Neymar, to whom he is compared, he seems less inclined towards spectacular play and dribbling and more concrete in his search for goals and in working for the team: «I try to run more than anyone else on the pitch, to put pressure on the defenders, to fight”.
At Real Madrid he will find an environment accustomed in recent years to developing talented young players, but perhaps the greatest dangers from the point of view of media pressure will continue to come from Brazil. The Brazilian newspaper The globe, in a recent article who underlined the danger of a “neymarization” of Endrick (Neymar has been at the center of endless controversies, including political ones), wrote: “What today seems like fair praise for his work, tomorrow can turn into inhuman pressures and expectations.”