Kerlon

[punkfootball]

We are meant to be in talks with the next ronaldhinio. look at him on youtube, he is amazing

[Busby Boy]

The guy looks great and one of the best talent's out there but I don't think United are in any talks with his club although if we were I'd be very happy!

[7even]

republikofmanc.proboards92.com/index.cgi?board=transfers&action=display&thread=1147942423&page=1

We’ve had lengthy discussions about this guy. He looks great. Although one minute we’re linked to people, then another minute we’re not, which seems to be happening a lot recently. But, who knows, we might find him heading our way sooner rather than later.

[onenedkelly]

Not sure he could play for us for a few years though

[Sky Sports 1]

onenedkelly said:

Not sure he could play for us for a few years though

3 years i believe it is
Rumour was he would be loaned to spain.. not so sure about that, would develop his game in the wrong way should it ever actually happen.

[donkeadrogba]

I think I made a point in that thread that if we realistically want him to be able to be a good player for us he should be playing in the english league from as young an age as is possible to get him used to the pace and physicality of the english game.

But alas that requires a change in the law....

[Sky Sports 1]

Exactly, and so for 5-6 million there would have to be a lot of clauses dependant on his performance in that..

[Tatty]

It's him and Edu Dracena we're interested in, although Cruzeiro have come out and said there's been no contact, and the story was started by their agent to engineer a move away.

[JoshReddevilz]

we should get him quick so we can loan him out to a team and get him a permit so he can play for us in 2 years

[punkfootball]

otherwose he will get snapped up by the chavs for 30 odd million

wernt we supposed to get essien when he was younger but couldnt get a work permit

[mancunian]

the Times is still claiming we are after him, btw this is a good read.


Rivelino concerned the Seleção has lost its street cred
By Owen Slot
Our correspondent learns that the conveyor belt of talent is in decline in the third of a four-part series about Brazilian football
THIS is ironic and deeply depressing but, anyway, here we go: we have, potentially, at the forthcoming World Cup, one of the best, most delicious Brazil teams of all time, and yet, simultaneously, there are siren voices back in their homeland giving warning that the production line is clattering to a halt, that Brazil has reached the end of the line, that, after a few more weeks, the golden days of the yellow shirts might be over.

First, a bit of evidence to the contrary. This time a year ago, Real Madrid were in the process of signing the latest twinkle-toed genius, Robinho. Manchester United are now attempting to pick off the next one, an 18-year-old named Kerlon Moura Souza, who dribbles the ball on his head, a new technique already known as the “seal dribble”. Simultaneously, Real are sniffing at a 14-year-old called Neymar, who shares Robinho’s agent; Jairzinho, one of those Brazil greats of 1970, is trying to flog three 13-year-olds and a 12-year-old to the Continent, and an 11-year-old from a farming community in the interior, named Jean Carlos Chera, has his own website claiming transfer-market interest right across Europe.

Most significantly, the figure for the total number of Brazilian players transferred abroad last year was 878 — which does not suggest that the talent well is drying up.

But here, at a football school in the Brooklin Paulistana district of São Paulo, we find a splendid old soul with an exceedingly simple argument that will scare anyone who cares. This is Roberto Rivelino, famous for his left foot, Zapata moustache and one of the other winners’ medals from 1970.

Rivelino grew up barefoot on the streets a mile from here. Indeed, from here you can see the ice-cream factory that has been built on the park where he used to play. A constant refrain from his youth were the mealtime cries from his mother, “Come home off the street, Roberto”, so much so that the line became the title of his autobiography. But no one lets their kids play in the streets the way they used to.

And this is why Rivelino built his football school. By day, he will sit in the office paternally surveying his team of coaches at work on the three AstroTurf pitches that sit above one of the city’s many six-lane arteries. More than 700 children play here twice a week and he feels this is his gift back to his country, not because he is creating the next Ronaldinho — he could not be less interested in the concept of selling a 14-year-old — but because, without the school, there is nowhere else for them to play.

“There isn’t anywhere safe any more,” he says. “I could never have seen myself having a football school like this, it never even struck my mind that there would be a need. But they simply don’t have anywhere else. When I was a kid, we’d play anywhere. But they don’t now, they can’t play on the streets. Unless they are members of a sports club, they can’t play at weekends, either, so what are they going to do? “The concept of street football in São Paulo doesn’t exist any more. You can kind of see it in Rio still, a bit, because they have the beach, but not here. From the point of view of the Brazilian national team, that’s bad because the real talent comes from the streets, from the kids who play there all day, every day, whenever they can.”

But Rivelino sees his school as fulfilling a social need rather than helping the Seleção (Brazil) to win World Cups. “I cannot do anything on the bigger scale,” he says, “I am just playing the tiny role that is left to me.” He thus gives scholarships to the kids who cannot afford the school and he bans agents from pitching up to cart off the best of them. His teams win silverware aplenty but when he does have a star in the making, he will alert a local club — not an agent — and if the boy does move one way, no money will go the other.

Yet the death of street football is a global story, not a Brazilian one, and other countries have survived. So, surely, it is the national federation and the clubs that should be coming to the rescue.

Rivelino smiles resignedly at the suggestion. “The authorities’ only concern is money,” he says. “Even the clubs, whose business it is to create good players, worry only about money. They are all in debt, so that becomes their concern rather than the quality of football in Brazil. That’s sad.”

Which brings us back to Robinho, Jairzinho, football, money and the financial plughole sucking out the talent. Accounts at the Central Bank in Brasilia show that between 1994 and 2005, the total value of exported players was $1.01 billion. No other country exports like this, but no other nation’s players come with a mark of quality inflated by dint of birthplace.

The results are twofold. One: in order to beat their competition, agents are selling players increasingly younger, which suits a buying market that is content to take kids before they are proven and their value has grown. That is why Jairzinho is advertising his crop of 13-year-olds and it is what Sócrates, the former Brazil captain, calls an “international underage traffic comparable to prostitution”.

Two: the player drain has driven down the standard of domestic Brazilian football. That is why all bar two of Brazil’s World Cup squad play in Europe and why — and this is crazy — imports into Brazil are on the rise. The goalscorer who won Corinthians the title last year, for instance, was Argentine (Carlos Tévez).

This is the downward spiral as seen by Sócrates. “Football used to start as a social thing,” he says, “now a good kid has a different outlook, he already has a professional career in mind. That same kid would once have developed his skills naturally on the streets — as we all once did — but he cannot do so now. So he’s directed professionally, he’ll be taught, so the skills are not self-learnt and his teacher will often do more harm than good and be looking for a cut at the end of it.”

Rivelino shakes his head. Technique and skill, he says, are not what they used to be. And there is no shred of arrogance when he says he would walk into the Seleção of today. He would not want to play today, though. Today, he is content merely that anyone is playing at all.

TOMORROW

Pele says that attack is the best form of defence - the tactics of 1970 explain