Richarlison was living at America Mineiro’s training ground when a shipment of clothing arrived with his name on it.
He was only a teenager, still just a ripple on the surface of the Brazilian game, but he had just agreed his first sponsorship deal with Nike. So they sent him tracksuits, training kit, shoes and boots, all shiny and box-fresh.
It would have been an exciting moment for any young player; for Richarlison, who had been selling ice lollies on dirt roads just a couple of years prior, it must have felt completely surreal. In the circumstances, he would have been forgiven for feeling a swell of pride, or even lording it over his team-mates. But no, that wasn’t Richarlison. Richarlison had other plans.
Quietly, he retreated to his room. He took all of his old clothes and stuffed them into a suitcase, then walked out of the main gate. The other kids in the dormitory had no idea what he was up to; when he returned, a couple of hours later, he still wouldn’t tell them. The truth only emerged later, after much pestering from his room-mate.
Richarlison had taken his belongings into town, to the centre of Belo Horizonte, and handed them out to homeless people. “He gave them everything, including the suitcase,” recalls Guilherme Xavier, one of his closest friends from the time.
A charity match in Nova Venecia last summer yielded 6.4 tonnes of food donations for people who struggle to make ends meet. “If you have the chance to make a small difference in someone’s life, don’t think twice,” he said, struggling (and again failing) to hold back tears. At the start of 2020, he arranged for care packages to be distributed after floods in his home state. He then did the same as COVID-19 took hold, helping 500 families. He is also an ambassador for the University of Sao Paulo, helping to fund and promote coronavirus research.
Before the Copa America last summer, he donated 50,000 Reais (£7,000) to a group of schoolchildren who wanted to travel to Taiwan for the International Mathematical Olympiad. A few weeks later, someone sent him a picture of kids in his hometown wearing hand-made ‘Richarlison, 21’ Brazil jerseys; he turned up at their school and gave them official ones.
Richarlison donates 10% of his salary to the Instituto Padre Roberto Lettieri, a home for cancer patients in Barretos, São Paulo state, and also supports 100 families in his hometown.