At 43 years old, Adriano Leite Ribeiro is still one of the most magnetic characters in Brazilian football, but his explanations for the shortening of his career, although simple, are not always accepted.
“Meu Medo Maior”, his memoir (published by Planeta, R$99), written in partnership with Ulisses Neto, may be the last chance to understand a man who is both kind and averse to opening up.
In 2000, at the age of 18, the tall, left-handed center forward and still a reserve, was called up by Emerson Leão for the World Cup qualifiers, even surprising Flamengo fans. Soon Adriano was taken to Italian football, where he exploded, playing for Parma and Inter Milan. The European peak lasted four years, due to mourning for his father and a state of deep depression, reasons that brought him back to Brazil, with the São Paulo shirt.
It can be said that Adriano stopped being a professional shortly after Flamengo’s Brazilian title in 2009, when he lost the squad for the 2010 World Cup. In 2011, he participated with just one goal in the Brazilian title won by Corinthians, but even this stint he already had an air of distraction: he had enough money and sponsorships and he just wanted to be back in the Vila Cruzeiro favela, in the north of Rio, surrounded by friends, drinking beer and eating McDonald’s in the only place where he always felt at home. .
From then on, each step towards premature career abandonment – in the name of enjoying a life discreetly dedicated to worldly pleasures – seems to have generated an even greater public passion. Today he is captivating Didico, not only for those close to him, but also for his fans.
The sincerity with which he never got used to the jet set –without even embracing social media as the influencer he could be– made him the incarnation of the Brazilian who, having conquered the world, did not forget his origins, the famous “people like people”. It’s a completely different direction from Neymar (who is only mentioned in the book once, as an opponent, in 2009), in one of the most incredible contrasts in Brazilian football: on the one hand, Neymar, the perfectionist boy who was never late for training and which always aroused love and hate; on the other, the little boy who always had problems with the duties of professional football and who, by leaving his career early, became even more beloved.
The fact that Adriano preferred to release a memoir instead of a straight-up documentary also highlights the difference in generations. An audiovisual product would have been able to remind us of the brilliance of everything Adriano did in the Brazilian and European fields, but perhaps it would not have captured his soul. There would hardly be enough archive images to recount the odyssey of the boy who, at the age of 7, was convinced by his mother, Rosilda, and grandmother Vanda to face the costly adventure of entering the Flamengo school, on the other side of the city, escorted by the grandmother and fed on popcorn and bread with sugar. And character building is essential to begin to digest your dramatic career choice.
It is clear that journalist Ulisses Neto (who signs as co-author) is extremely concerned about capturing the voice, inflections, slang and rhythm of Adriano’s speech. And, in fact, Ulisses has a good ear: he collaborated with the website The Players’ Tribune, a platform that is famous for producing first-person texts by famous athletes, providing the typically aloof interviewees with a safe place for their versions.
“Our first meeting was in December 2020, at a hotel in Barra. I waited four hours for him to come down, to the Players Tribune. He liked the result so much that he agreed to write the biography. There were countless meetings and in almost all of them I had to drinking”, says the journalist, 41.
The whole time, the feeling is that we are in a kiosk in Barra da Tijuca, while fans, women and beer are positioned around the former striker, who tells his stories and his hesitations with pleasure. Adriano is not in the mood to make enemies, nor does he undertake any reflection beyond his reach. It is even surprising that the words “racism” and “racist” do not appear in the 502 pages about a black boy.
“I think there are moments in the book when it is clear that Adriano suffered attacks typical of racism”, says Ulisses, over the phone, to Sheet. “But it’s not a subject he addresses, and my role was to tell the memoir his way.”
In the end, what the text communicates, in an absolutely fast and seductive reading, is the former player’s enormous relief in the relative peace he achieved after getting rid of the dreams that, once embraced by the boy, almost devoured the boy. man. In a way, Adriano reflects another great talent that we recently said goodbye to: the pianist Arthur Moreira Lima (1940-2024), who took directions contrary to those he naturally projected, certain that there were “other things in life” besides study, as he told The New York Times in 1981.
For those interested in football, the book sheds light on famous episodes. He delightfully describes his version of the afternoon in which, after a disagreement with his then-girlfriend Joana Machado, the legend emerged that Adriano and his Flamengo colleagues had tied the muscular personal trainer to a tree, and allows us to understand the motorcycle accident that caused a burn third degree in the heel and took Adriano out of decisive games of 2009. But “Meu Medo Maior” would not be such a rewarding read without its genuine interest in his character, simple and complex, and a formidable time to understand him.
