The Moment of the Weekend usually restricts itself to European club football, league or cup, but with domestic football taking a break, this column decided to train its focus on the international fixtures. And on this packed weekend, one particular moment stood out most...Endrick's first goal for Brazil:
By itself, the goal isn't all that fancy. A fellow forward runs onto a neat lofted through ball, takes a shot that rebounds off the keeper... and the goalscorer taps it into an empty net from about five yards out. Not exactly the kind of goal that speaks to your soul, that makes you go, 'Ah, football!' What that tap-in represented, though, just might.
The facts around the goal are pretty neat -- it may have been a friendly, but the goal was an 80th-minute winner for Brazil against England: never a shabby fixture to score a game-winner in. At 17 years and 246 days old, the goalscorer was the youngest to ever score in an international match at Wembley. He was also the youngest to score for Brazil since a certain Ronaldo: those are stats you take seriously -- but it's the story around it that makes this goal so special.
You see, what you saw there, on a non-descript Saturday evening in London was the global release of the trailer of the movie that may define football's future. Sounds excessively OTT, doesn't it? Well, that's the thing with the star of that movie... there's no such thing as Over The Top with Endrick Felipe Moreira de Sousa.
Son of a failed footballer (who later found employment as a janitor at Palmeiras) and a mother who struggled to make ends meet (so much so that he and his two sisters had a stint at an orphanage), Endrick has already played two seasons at Palmeiras and has won the league (Brasilerao Serie A) in both. He is the youngest player to have represented Palmeiras in the first division, and the second youngest scorer that division has seen.
Oh, and he's scored some cracking goals for them, none better (or more important) than the two which inspired a sensational comeback against Botafogo last November that decided the title race.
A month after his debut in Serie A, Real Madrid had signed him up -- he will line up alongside compatriots Vinicius Jr. and Rodrygo at Estadio Santiago Bernabeu in July this year when he turns 18. OTT? Please. There's just something different about this kid.
From the way he looks (short and stocky) to the way he dresses (jersey tucked in, shorts pulled up to proper waist high), from the way he moves (with a slow-motion urgency that's disconcertingly quick) to the fact that he sings along as he plays (local country music, usually), there's something about him that marks him out from his contemporaries... at times, he looks and feels like he's just stepped out of the 70s.
Which is exactly what the whole of Brazil believes - this, they say, is the next Pele. He's a youngster who likes playing centre-forward in an era of inverted wingers. A dribbler and a punching bag. Flamboyant and clinical. He has an uncommon aura, an intangible but very palpable manifestation of all that promise and potential.
He may have his rough edges like the England game showed clearly, but you can see why the Brazilians are excited -- they haven't seen a #9 like this for some time now. And a proper Brazilian #9 is a species of footballer that can make generations fall in love with the game. Get on YouTube and browse through his compilations and you can see visual evidence of this. They're not as otherworldly brilliant as Neymar's was at this age (where he basically scored a Puskas contender every other game) but they do the job. His goal at Wembley just served to underline all that.
The youngest goalscorers in Brazil men's senior team history ������
Endrick is among legends �� pic.twitter.com/qWq0otXozb
- ESPN FC (@ESPNFC) March 24, 2024
Football has seen way too many precocious talents fall by the wayside for any of this to be taken for granted. But the ingredients are all there, and they seem to be getting added at the right time, in the right way. "Time will show who this boy might become," said his national team coach, Dorival Junior, after the England game. "If he keeps up the attitude he has shown up to now, he will be a very important name in Brazilian football and world football."
The trailer's out now, the screenplay has seen lift off, and the world's hooked. Next O Rei or not, football cannot wait any longer to see what Endrick is all about.