The viral Barcelona refuge for footballers who were once deceived

Barcelona"My childhood friends are selling drugs in the favela with a gun in their hand. That's the future of Brazil: it's either football, music, or drug trafficking, and often you don't have a choice. It's luck," says Lucas Bruno de Almeida (Guarujá, São Paulo; 2006). He shared a locker room with Lamine Yamal, Pau Cubarsí, and Marc Bernal in Barça's youth academy and is now one of the key players for Ousadia, a team with a unique story. This team, made up entirely of Brazilians, debuted this season in the Quarta Catalana and is the eighth most followed club in Spain on Instagram, despite playing in the tenth and lowest tier. They boast a following of 1.6 million people on the platform, similar to Athletic Club. Only Real Madrid (179), Barça (144), Atlético de Madrid (18), Sevilla (3.7), Betis and Almería (2.8), and Villarreal (1.7) have more. It far surpasses Girona, triples Espanyol's, and has the same number of followers as Osasuna, Levante, Rayo Vallecano, Elche, and Alavés combined. Its most recent rivals have 164 and 699 followers, respectively.

"It's crazy," admits Edivando Júnior (Rio de Janeiro, 2000), player, president, and founder of the club. It's a influencer With 1.9 million followers, Ousadia has been growing thanks to its community. "I have more followers, but things are getting tighter," he says, laughing. He comes from the same favela (Alemão) where a police operation a few days ago left more than 100 dead. "I used to live there," he says with a sigh. "I wasn't afraid because the favela is a very peaceful place when there's no fighting. But when the police come in, things get complicated," he says. His parents used to scold him if he went near the window to watch the "fight."

De Almeida continues, after training at the Barcelona Industrial School's football field: "There was a lot of crime; lots of thugs with guns, people selling drugs, and junkies in the street. It was everyday life, something normal for us. You weren't afraid because it was normal." "I've never gone hungry, thank God, but sometimes maybe I wanted one more cookie and I couldn't have it," he says. He has the favela tattooed on his leg.

His grandfather had emigrated to Barcelona looking for a better future for the whole family and signed him up for trials at Barça. Junior, for his part, left Brazil at 20, chasing the dream of becoming a professional, heading to the Albanian Third Division. "When I got there, it was totally different from what I'd been promised. Real football isn't what everyone thinks. It's very difficult," he says. He lived with three teammates in a room inside the stadium itself: "It was so cold that we slept wearing four jackets and two pairs of pants." They didn't get paid. When there was no meat, they ate their fill of rice, and when there was no rice, they ate their fill of bread.

Every child in Brazil dreams of being a footballer, and there are many agents who play on this dream, using the lure of Europe. Tarciso de Padua (Salvador, 1997) does just that: an agent presented him with an opportunity in Poland, and he left without hesitation. "When I got there, it was nothing. Nothing. Just a false promise, a scam. He had stolen my money," he recalls. He had gone to Krakow with two teammates who also joined Ousadia this summer. They showed up for the trials after seeing a post. They were already fans, just like De Almeida.

Football and social media content

The team is made up of Brazilians who were already in Catalonia and, above all, Brazilians who have come from their country or from Belgium, France, Italy, Poland, and Portugal to take advantage of Barcelona's football exposure. Their dream is to be professional footballers. "Not yet, not yet. At what level? I'm focused on La Liga. Football is my life, my priority," says De Padua. He's 27 years old and plays for Quarta Catalana, nine levels below La Liga. They call him Kylian Mbappé because they look exactly alike. He lives in a house provided by a sponsor with ten other players. Most of them don't work. They're focused on football: training and creating content for their social media.

The club's Instagram account and the players' own accounts receive messages every day from fellow Brazilians eager for an opportunity. "I have 22,000 emails from players, and there's only room for 22 on the team," says Júnior. More than 90% of the messages and followers are from Brazil. "Football is everything to us, everything. If we have a problem, something on our minds, we play football and forget about everything. It makes us very happy. This is what football is for Brazilians in the streets, on the courts, and on the fields, wherever. There are millions of people who dream of leaving the favela and want so much, so much, so much for it." Junior.

He arrived in Barcelona in 2023 and created the club in 2024, with the aim of giving Brazilian players a meeting point and, above all, a safe starting point in Europe. Also, a lifeline against the loneliness of the migrant, a place to come together around the ball. "It's not easy to conquer your place in a place that isn't yours," says Junior. He wants to reach the First Division with Ousadia. "Being here is like being in Brazil," confirms Da Padua.

From the lowest tier of Catalan football, De Almeida emphasizes that he is living a "dream": "I'm representing my country. It's something that all the kids from Brazil and the favelas have always wanted: to experience what it's like to play in Spain, in Europe." He says that Lamine Yamal, Cubarsí, and Bernal were "different from the rest, really talented." "If they saw me, I think they'd remember me," he says, smiling.