Galvao said Richarlison is the man. He repeat once and twice. Al-Rawi’s praise came loudly for the first goal scored by the number nine of the Brazilian team in the group’s first appearance in the World Cup, on Thursday (24), against Serbia. But when Richarlison scored the second goal with a shot, Galvao lost his voice.
Twitter too. Classmates from the Hat House reappeared to talk about it. Mom called. “Daughter, tell your grandmother that you went to her family’s house.” But the best reaction came from Richarlison’s aunt, Odyssia.
“He is our boy,” he exclaimed in a voice message, “from the middle of the bush, runny, brilliant in the election.” This one got it. Because Richarlison -who is Charlinho at home- is a very good boy. Having delved into his life, he made me meet a special man, loved by everyone, loved by his aunt and cousins, father and mother, neighbors they had not seen in years, and children playing soccer on the city soccer field. . I don’t even know him. Richarlison unanimously.
He appears in Nova Venecia from time to time. He walks down the same street where he lived as a child and repeats the friendly gesture he made when he saw an old woman full of grocery bags. He created a soccer team in the city, financed research for a vaccine against COVID-19 and used his own image to encourage people to get vaccinated.
Richarlison goes on to emphasize that, given how long he’s been in his life, he can’t close his eyes when things go wrong for a poor guy. And things often go wrong for the poor. Once he was poor. When he lived with his aunt Odyssia, in a ramshackle house that flooded every time it rained, he slept in a room with his cousins and uncles and sold popsicles to supplement his income.
Richarlison politicized. He spoke of the power outages that affect Amapá, of the fires in the Pantanal, and protested the death of George Floyd; He raises issues of racism and cares for people with social vulnerabilities. He demands food on the village table and true education for less fortunate children. Richarlison and his charitable work have earned him the Community Champion Award from the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA) in England.
It is time for Brazilians to breathe a little after all this pain: a pandemic that has claimed more than 600,000 lives, confined people to their homes and destabilized them so much that it ruined the mood for what will come next. It was not the atmosphere of the World Cup yet, until yesterday Richarlison blew up and opened up so much that the atmosphere of the World Cup is within us.
Perhaps the consolation is in welcoming an art that fights against what attacks the values and experiences of Brazilians. Why not embrace Richarlison as the idol of salvation that Brazil deserves? Nationally, Richarlison also became a Charleneo.
