The journey of three evangelical Brazilians who fight to dedicate themselves to football in Catalonia

LleidaFor a long time, Brazil has been an inexhaustible source of footballing talent. Some of the best foreign players who have passed through Barça in recent decades come from the nation that exports the most footballers to other countries in the world. According to the global report by CIES Football Observatory, this year 1,455 Brazilian professionals are playing far from their homeland. But this data does not include footballers of a lower profile, who play in semi-professional leagues and do not move millions. This is the case of three young men in their early twenties, evangelicals, born and raised in Brazil, who in the coming weeks will do their pre-season with the first team of UE Balàfia. The historic neighborhood club of Lleida needs to strengthen its squad for the upcoming season, which they will play in Primera Catalana after being promoted last campaign.

Daniel Cordeiro (Cidade Ocidental, Goiàs, 2002) first came to Europe at 17 to have a trial period with Porto's youth team. Despite being an agile and skillful forward, Cordeiro did not convince the Portuguese club's technical commission and had to turn back. However, he did not give up on his European dream and wanted to try a second time, but he was denied entry into the country at Lisbon airport. He tried his luck a third time: with his teammate Rafael – who returned to Brazil after a few months – they managed to pass immigration controls and secure a place in CF Balaguer's U19 team, at the beginning of 2020. Since then, Cordeiro has strung together an unusual journey through half a dozen clubs in Ponent: Castellserà, Angulària, Borges Blanques, Agramunt, Tàrrega and Guissona. All the teams in the region have enjoyed or suffered his goals and plays.

During the 6 years he has been in Europe, Cordeiro has always maintained daily conversations with family and friends in Brazil. Before coming to Catalonia, he played for many clubs in his region of birth, between the Federal District, where Brasília is located, and Luziânia, a city in eastern Goiàs very close to the capital. There he coincided with other players, including Marcos Alves “Marquinhos” (Brasília DF, 2000) and Breno Andrade (Brasília DF, 2001). To help them pursue their dream of dedicating themselves to professional football, Cordeiro acted as an intermediary for them to sign with clubs where he had played. Thus, in September 2023, defensive midfielder Marquinhos, and in January of the following year, Breno Andrade, a center-back almost two meters tall, landed in the regional leagues of Ponent. Marquinhos is the only one who already has his contract secured at Balàfia, after achieving promotion to Tercera Federación by scoring decisive goals for Internacional de Huesca last season. But the other two also trust in making a place for themselves in the squad through talent, sacrifice, and faith.

Parallel jobs, the indispensable requirement for survival

“Dani was very clear with us: we came to work and also to play football, but above all to work,” explains Andrade, grateful for his teammate's honesty. This is a reality they all three live with: clubs provide them with a maintenance subsidy, affordable rental housing, and travel assistance, but this is not enough to live with dignity, let alone send money to their families. Cordeiro and Andrade each have a child in Brazil; the latter and Marquinhos are married and haven't seen their respective wives for almost three years. To face their responsibilities, despite not having legal permission to work, they have to combine training and matches with parallel jobs, which they often get thanks to the clubs themselves. The type of job and the conditions it includes are factors that can determine whether they opt to accept one offer or another.

There is another member of the clan who will not do the preseason with his teammates. This is Lucas Gonçalves (Luziânia, Goiàs, 2003), who played for Alcarràs last season but has not played an official match since December, when he was injured. He is now considering offers from lower division teams because they offer him a job with better conditions and help to regularize his situation. Lucas prioritizes these conditions over the strictly sporting aspect. In Marquinhos's case, after working as a delivery driver, waiter, kitchen assistant, and in a nursing home, an agreement last season also included legal advice to obtain his papers. Cordeiro and Andrade – who have also worked hard cleaning the changing rooms of the club where they played, vaccinating pigs, installing partitions... – have benefited from the massive regularization and, from this season onwards, will be able to contribute legally.

All four have experienced hardships and difficulties during these years of irregular status. It hasn't always been easy to find work. Or at least, to find jobs that didn't take advantage of them. “There are people who see you as ignorant and exploit you without scruples,” Andrade explains. The central defender recalls a time when he and a Colombian teammate had to split their wages because the person who had commissioned them for a job paid only one salary to both of them. He also recounts another occasion when, with the same teammate, they went to work at the house of the president of the club where they played. While carrying out the tasks, they chatted and told each other jokes to liven up the time, until the president asked them how they managed to laugh so much and be so happy. Andrade still can't believe it. “How can someone who has three cars in the garage and a mansion with a pool ask us why we are happy? At that moment, I understood that happiness has nothing to do with material possessions,” he concludes.

Evangelism, a matter of faith

As ARA explained, following the elimination of the Brazilian team against Norway in the World Cup, some sports commentators from the South American country debated whether the rise of evangelism in Brazil would be harming the performance of the canarinha team. The hypothesis is that since evangelicals believe in predestination, meaning that everything happens for a reason, and they prohibit any party that includes alcohol and disinhibition, this would have acted to the detriment of the joy in Brazilian football, which shone more in the time when its stars, as good Catholics, believed in free will and when they made mistakes, sometimes took responsibility for their errors and corrected them. Today's players are not taking responsibility for the successive disappointments of the five-time champions in recent World Cups and are resorting to an individualism that could be translated, quite simply, into if Brazil has lost it is because God willed it, and it would be audacious to question the plan that the divine entity has in store for each person.

All three reject that the rise of evangelism harms the seleção. Andrade argues that this faith in God's will is what has given him the strength to persevere in difficult times. In his opinion, those who are truly harming football are the intermediaries and agents, who have many interests and too much power in Brazilian clubs. From the arbitrary actions of football agents, many talents and raw diamonds suffer, who, still adolescents, are treated as commodities that increase in price with a goal or a good play, but can lose all their value due to an injury. In any case, none of the three sees an incompatibility between practicing evangelism and being a cheerful and uninhibited person. They cling to their religion to maintain the hope that some club in the Second or Third RFEF will notice them and they can live solely from sport.

As the conversation leads us to talk about Endrick, one of the latest millionaire sales in Brazilian football. Endrick (Taguatinga DF, 2006) is also evangelical, has been married since he was 18, and will soon be a father. Born in the same area as the protagonists of this report, unlike Cordeiro, Marquinhos, and Andrade, he speaks little and smiles even less. This could be the confirmation of the theory of evangelism and the lack of joy in the new generations of Brazilian players. But Andrade is convinced that Endrick reserves his smiles for the private sphere, because football is the most serious thing in his life. “It's what puts food on the table, and you don't play with food,” he argues. For this reason, on his first goal in the Champions League, he decides to shoot from outside the box, despite having Mbappé and Vinícius unmarked. “It has cost him so much to get there that it's logical he wants to score himself,” assures the center-back. I add that perhaps this extreme need for self-affirmation is the true cause of individualism and the lack of joy in the Brazilian national team. All three nod. They know the sacrifices that football demands to dedicate oneself to it. For some it is an option, but for others it is the dream of escaping poverty and providing a dignified life for their families.