THE MAKING OF THE PREDATOR

The three men who shaped the super striker

- MILAN SIME MARTINIC

It is one minute to 8am. The roll-up doors swing overhead, and the Supermercado Varejão gro-cery store in Valpariso De Goias, Brasilia, is open early. Customers materialise from the street; by 8am it looks like it has been open for hours. Out of its depths emerges a thin, unassuming young man in good shape and wearing a black polo T-shirt. Fabio Rodrigues dos Santos owns the store; he also owns an important part of one of the most remarkable stories in Brazilian football today.

Fabio played a crucial role in the discovery and evolution of Endrick Felipe Moreira de Sousa, the 16-year-old striker for top Brazilian club Palmeiras. He is the buzz in the football crazy nation and the rest of the footballing world, and English and European clubs wait for the day he turns 18, when he is officially eligible to sign a contract outside Brazil. Real Madrid and Barcelona are reportedly eyeing him, but the winning bidder will have to cough up over €60 million (nearly 0500 crore)—according to the release clause he signed with Palmeiras when he turned 16. The deal could even happen before Endrick becomes eligible to sign the contract, as it happened with fellow Brazilians Vinicius Junior and Rodrygo; Real Madrid had snapped them up for €45 million each.

Endrick knocked the ball around in Valparaiso, in the rural Capital District that surrounds Brasilia, but then humble beginnings figure in the childhood stories of many a Brazilian legend. Endrick came to Fabio when he was just a toddler, and he discerned something very special in the kid.