Francileudo dos Santos

This is something that we are very proud of: the export of national talents to the rest of the world. But it wasn’t like that before, in the beginning. I know that Pelé went to play in an US team in 1975 but then I was only 4 and don’t remember that. The great pain we suffered was when our local team Flamengo lost his main man, Zico. It was 1983 and we felt like he was betraying our hearts. Flamengo, being the Brazilian team with more fans around the country, made Zico’s departure to Italy’s Udinese a great blow to our nation. It was the time to learn that a man’s career is above the love to his uniform.

Well, after this trauma, we began to see the great soccer idols of our nation playing in other big clubs around the world and that was something that we could smile about. I remember Falcão to be called “King of Rome” and now Adriano “The Emperor” in Italy, Ronaldo to be called “The Phenomenon” in Spain. These examples are only the nicknamed ones, because you’ll find that they are not alone. In Kaká’s AC Milan there are a total of 5 Brazilian players. Real Madrid has 5 too. Barcelona too. I believe there is a rule about the maximum number of foreign players nowadays.

So we look at those big bucks teams hiring our talents all the time and we love to read in the papers that they are doing well. And now we can look above the clubs and see Brazilians at the other national teams too. There will be 3 brazilian coaches (Japan, Portugal and Costa Rica) and some players with other national teams. I always remember Deco from Portugal, but we end up finding out about others players that we have never heard about. It’s the case of Francileudo dos Santos the striker of Tunisia. He was directly responsible for the victory over Zambia today at the African Nations Cup, leading the team and scoring 3 times. Funny name aside, he is one more reason for us to be proud.