This was going to be concerning the search.
It was going to be a type of items with an absence at its coronary heart, a sort of magical thriller write-around, Frank Sinatra Has A Chilly for the Brazilian soccer heads.
Generally you get the interview. Generally you simply should shrug and inform the story with out it. A model of the story, anyway.
That’s the way it was shaping up with Kerlon Moura Souza. It was going to be a long-distance profile, the story of one of many recreation’s strangest parlour methods and its creator, advised by means of the hazy prism of reminiscence. I had dug out the movies of the dribble that made him well-known and watched them numerous occasions. Perhaps it was higher this fashion, I advised myself. Nothing ruins a people story like interrogating the logic of its plot factors.
It wasn’t that I hadn’t tried. No, the making an attempt was going to be an enormous a part of it. The plan was to actually ham issues up, to make a fruitless and objectively fairly boring pursuit sound one thing like spycraft.
I used to be going to reference the pleading emails I had despatched him throughout a interval of years; the time spent monitoring his whereabouts from my bed room; the Instagram messages to his private and enterprise accounts; the hopeful enquiry to certainly one of his employers. All of which yielded a grand whole of… nada. A giant previous nothing sandwich with a facet of radio silence.
As time went on, I usually imagined what the title may be. ‘The Hunt for the Seal Dribbler’, maybe. Or, if that indirect reference to his trademark transfer didn’t minimize it with my editor, one thing a little bit extra on-the-nose. ‘Kerlon: An Unrequited Love Story’ would have labored simply positive.
Earlier this yr, I made a decision the second had come. Sufficient ready, sufficient frustration. I used to be going to do it, going to jot down the piece, going to lastly tick it off my checklist and neglect about it.
Then I discovered him.
As soon as upon a time, there was a boy. The boy was a proficient footballer. He was nippy, skilful and powerful. Folks thought he was going to be a star sooner or later. In lots of instances, that’s so far as the fable goes. It’s usually sufficient to suck folks in.
This explicit boy, although, additionally had one thing else. He had a particular transfer, an invention all of his personal. He may make the ball stick with his brow. He may flick it up and simply… hold it there, gravity be damned. It went with him wherever he went. He may run, even change route, and nonetheless it stayed there, simply above his eyeline, a little bit spherical pet.
Some folks beloved the boy, beloved his trick. It was enjoyable and it was humorous in the way in which that uncommon issues could be. If anybody had thought to do it earlier than, they’d given up lengthy earlier than displaying it off. However the boy wasn’t embarrassed and he wasn’t scared. He did the trick even when he knew it might finish in tears, even after it had begun to show strangers into enemies.
The trick made the boy well-known. It additionally made him a goal.
The youngsters are leaving once I arrive. They shuffle off with their mother and father into vehicles and vehicles, exhausted however pleased. Day two of their week-long summer season soccer camp is over.
It’s simply after noon in Hemby Bridge, a commuter city simply southeast of Charlotte, North Carolina. The air is scorching and heavy with moisture; my T-shirt begins to stay to my again quickly after I step out of the taxi. It doesn’t assist that I’m jogging, frantically plotting a path to the rear of the native elementary faculty, making an attempt to get to the sports activities pitches earlier than Kerlon leaves.
He’s not anticipating me. I don’t know what to anticipate of him.
As I strategy throughout the grass, a person is packing the final bag of footballs into the boot of his automotive. He wears a bucket hat and a black coaching shirt. He’s tanned and stocky, facial hair cropped right into a neat goatee. It’s him.
I shout out his identify. A smile spreads throughout his face.
He’s gracious and pleasant. He says he has lunch deliberate together with his household, however that he’ll speak if I come again tomorrow, vivid and early, earlier than coaching. I inform him he has a deal.
Kerlon was well-known earlier than he had even performed first-team soccer. It was an inevitability: the trick — first dusted off at youth stage for Cruzeiro, then for Brazil’s under-17 facet — was all the time destined to make waves.
For one factor, it was simply so odd, so wilfully off-kilter. There are a thousand methods to dribble previous an opponent, however till Kerlon got here alongside, they stunning a lot all concerned the ft. To observe him set off on a run, ball bobbling up and down on his forehead, was to be pressured to resolve what instinctively felt like a class error. Little surprise that defenders didn’t appear to know what to do with him within the early days; it’s laborious to counteract one thing you may barely even perceive.
The aspect of shock didn’t final. This was the mid-2000s, most likely barely too early for the trick to be known as a viral sensation, however clips of it quickly began doing the rounds. One, initially posted on YouTube in December 2005, has been watched over 3.7million occasions since. The seal dribble, folks known as the transfer, a reputation that conjured vibrant circus photos. Kerlon swiftly turned O Foquinha — The Little Seal — and it wasn’t lengthy earlier than his membership have been promoting seal toys, trying to money in on his identify.
Kerlon turned O Foquinha — The Little Seal (Daniel de Cerqueira/AFP by way of Getty Pictures)
There was extra to Kerlon’s recreation than his trademark transfer. He was prime scorer for Brazil on the South American Underneath-17 Championship in Venezuela, outshining future senior internationals Marcelo, Renato Augusto and Anderson. The title of one other common YouTube video in contrast him to Ronaldinho and whereas that was definitely on the beneficiant facet, Kerlon might be equally effervescent on his day. He may damage opposition groups together with his passing, together with his ending and together with his dead-ball skill. Nonetheless, the whole lot all the time got here again to the dribble.
Brazil went crazy for Kerlon’s dribble in a manner that perhaps solely Brazil may. This was soccer as improvisational theatre, as streetwise problem-solving and, above all, as unrefined play. The seal dribble was experimental, naive curiosity supercharged by approach. It was ludic and it was ludicrous — not the factor itself, essentially, though it did have a sure came-up-with-this-after-six-beers vitality. No, the ludicrous half was that Kerlon would do it in precise matches.
He did it within the South American Championship towards Colombia and Uruguay. Later, he did it for Cruzeiro in an area derby, sparking a mass brawl and an ethical panic. However we’ll get to that later.
Kerlon performing his signature talent (AP Picture/Ana Maria Otero)
Beneath bushes that sway within the morning breeze, Kerlon will get as comfortable because the wood bench will enable. We’re a little bit delayed — coaching begins in 20 minutes — so there isn’t a nice preamble, no backlift. Slowly however confidently, Kerlon simply launches into the story of the trick that modified his life.
“After I was a really younger child, I’d practice lots with my dad,” he says. “Simply us two. In the future he kicked the ball up excessive for me. It bounced on the ground and got here as much as my head. I did 4 or 5 little headers in a row, holding the ball up. My dad stopped. He requested, ‘When you ran with the ball in your head like that, would it not be a free kick?’. I mentioned that I didn’t know however that we should always discover out. My dad seemed up the principles and noticed that it was authorized. There was no subject with it.”
Kerlon’s father, Silvino, requested him to maintain practising the transfer. At first, he would do it on the spot. Later, he tried it whereas strolling in a straight line. “Then I’d stick with it whereas operating and at last I did it with cones, dribbling round them like they have been opposition gamers,” explains Kerlon. “We labored on it day-after-day with a purpose to good it. It was an actual course of.”
When Kerlon had nailed the approach, Silvino started to consider how his son may use it in video games. He purchased a ebook on peripheral imaginative and prescient and integrated that into the coaching regime, the thought being that Kerlon would be capable to see opponents approaching even when he had the ball up excessive.
“It was the product of nice dedication on his half,” says Kerlon. “It was simple for me to maintain the ball up, however he labored out how it might work on the pitch. The technique was all his.”
Kerlon was 13 when he first did the trick round different folks. He had simply joined Cruzeiro and was enjoying in midfield in an academy match.
“At one level, the opposition goalkeeper took a aim kick and it was identical to it was in coaching with my dad,” he says. “My dad would hit the ball lengthy and I’d management it on my chest, lifting it into the air. The identical occurred within the recreation and off I went. The opposite youngsters simply stopped. I saved going and saved going, from the center of the sphere to the sting of the field. After I bought to the penalty spot, I introduced the ball down and scored. It was all so automated.”
It was additionally proof of idea. Now that Kerlon and Silvino knew that the dribble may work, they doubled down on it. Kerlon saved practising the trick and sometimes introduced it out in matches — though by no means, he insists, only for the sake of it. He strongly rejects the notion that the seal dribble was some sort of gimmick.
“I believe it was an answer I had obtainable to me, a manner of getting out of a tough scenario,” he says. “I by no means walked out onto the sphere planning on doing it. It was simply one thing that may occur naturally.”
It was predictable that sure folks would come to view the transfer as a provocation. Dribbling is a blood sport at one of the best of occasions; this felt to some like an try and humiliate. At youth stage, Kerlon would get tripped and kicked. By the point he was enjoying with adults, the worst challenges had began to look quite a bit like sucker punches.
Working example: the Belo Horizonte derby in September 2007. Cruzeiro have been beating Atletico Mineiro 4-3 with 10 minutes to play when Kerlon — a second-half substitute — flicked the ball onto his head following a brief nook.
One, two, three touches later, Atletico full-back Coelho got here alongside and shoulder-charged him into one other dimension, making Kerlon’s head snap again with the influence. It was an terrible, cynical problem. A number of seconds later, as gamers from each side piled in, the scene seemed like one thing from a martial arts film.
The incident provoked a great deal of hand-wringing on each side. Many thought Kerlon — the sufferer, by any wise measure — was by some means in charge for the tough remedy.
“Sooner or later, he may miss lots of soccer,” mentioned Atletico’s coach, Emerson Leao. “Perhaps sooner or later he does that, will get kicked within the face and by no means performs once more.”
Luiz Alberto, the captain of rival membership Fluminense, was much more specific: “It’s disrespectful to his opponents. They’re professionals, too. He wouldn’t get previous me. I’d use capoeira (an Afro-Brazilian martial artwork) strikes if I needed to. I’d take the ball, his head and the whole lot else.”
Kerlon, at the least, was capable of defend himself with eloquence past his years. “Followers go to the stadium to see a spectacle,” he mentioned. “We have to resolve what the primary thought of Brazilian soccer is — artwork or violence.”
(AP Picture/Fernando Llano)
His advocates included, bizarrely, Atletico midfielder Maicosuel, in addition to a variety of readers of Placar journal. “It brings folks to the stadium in the identical manner Garrincha’s feints as soon as did,” learn one message of help, revealed on the letters web page. “No-holds-barred fighters like that troglodyte Coelho should be punished.”
The perfect a part of twenty years later, Kerlon sees the humorous facet of all of it. He says he realised early on that the seal dribble could be divisive.
“There was lots of help for me within the youth sides,” he says, “however at senior stage, even my very own team-mates thought I shouldn’t do it. They might say I used to be asking for bother. I had a number of points with the older ones. They actually didn’t prefer it.”
What about his opponents? Did their violence get to him? Kerlon laughs. “No,” he says. “I appreciated it. While you like to play with freedom, whenever you like to dribble and beat your man, it feels good to get kicked. So long as you don’t get injured, it’s sensible. It’s not a foul factor. It drives you on.
“You see that the opposite man is pissed off with you, however you do it anyway as a result of it’s a part of your recreation. I believe that’s cool. Take a look at Neymar. He feels good when he beats his man and will get fouled, when he is usually a bit dramatic. That’s a part of the Brazilian type.”
When it got here to his coaches, some have been extra open to the trick than others. “A number of of them thought it was pointless; others thought it put our workforce in danger,” he says. “I used to be all the time clear that I’d by no means do the transfer in my very own penalty space. I mentioned I’d solely do it close to the opposition field, the place we would win a harmful free kick or a penalty. The thought was to provide you with one thing for the workforce, not for me.”
Even when he did get the inexperienced gentle, different points emerged. Kerlon says one supervisor requested him to do the seal dribble straight from kick-off. “That is once I was enjoying for Sliema Wanderers in Malta,” he says. “The coach needed Rafael Ledesma, the opposite Brazilian on the workforce, to flick the ball up for me as quickly because the referee began the match. He defined this in a workforce speak earlier than a match. All the opposite gamers simply checked out me, as if to say, ‘Actually?’.
“I mentioned, ‘How am I going to try this? I’ll have 11 opposition gamers in entrance of me. What’s the purpose? What probability do I’ve?’. He mentioned that I may win us a free kick. Ultimately, I advised Ledesma to flick the ball up and I’d give it a go. However it was unattainable. I took a few touches after which the opposite workforce simply smashed into me. I injured my leg and needed to go off. I didn’t even make it out of the centre circle.”
It’s right here that the opposite strand of Kerlon’s story — the diminishing returns, the gradual tumble down the slopes of the soccer pyramid — comes into focus.
(AP Picture/Fernando Llano)
The tide of early fanfare carried Kerlon to Italy — he moved to Inter Milan by way of Chievo and was represented by the late tremendous agent Mino Raiola — however not a lot additional. He by no means performed a aggressive match for Inter or for Ajax throughout a mortgage stint there. His subsequent full-time employers have been Fujieda MYFC in Japan. There was a fleeting spell within the U.S. with Miami Dade FC. After a handful of video games in Malta and some extra in Slovakia, he retired in 2017, aged 29.
It might be simple to look at that confounding CV and assume that Kerlon was by no means truly that good — that the seal dribble had written cheques that the remainder of his recreation couldn’t money. There could also be a level of fact to that, however the actuality is that his physique by no means allowed him to completely check the bounds of his skill.
There have been six ACL accidents — two of them whereas he was nonetheless in his teenagers — and a pair of great ankle issues. Every one slowed him down. It was unattainable to construct up any semblance of momentum.
“I step by step misplaced my love for soccer,” he says. “After each surgical procedure, I took six or seven months to completely get well. After I got here again, it was laborious to maintain up, bodily. Then I’d get injured once more. I checked out different gamers and they’d run up and down continuously. I attempted to maintain up however some muscle would go and I’d be out for 3 weeks.”
He endured it for so long as he may, however there was a restrict. “Every little thing damage by the tip,” he says. “It was so dangerous. It wasn’t that I didn’t love soccer. It was that I didn’t wish to be in ache anymore. That’s why I ended.”
There isn’t a bitterness in Kerlon’s voice. It helps that he’s content material with life within the U.S., his residence for the previous couple of years. He first moved to Connecticut, searching for job alternatives he felt have been missing in Brazil, then got here all the way down to North Carolina throughout the Covid pandemic. His household is pleased and work is sweet: he’s the technical director of the native soccer faculty and in addition places on non-public periods. “I like being concerned within the recreation,” he says. “It’s what I do know greatest.”
The American youngsters have a imprecise sense of his story, he says, however don’t get too excited by it. The relative anonymity fits him positive. He’s pleased together with his legacy and has no enormous need to burnish it. He has achieved a few brief interviews with Brazilian web sites since retiring, however he ignores most requests. He bought sufficient consideration in these early years to final a lifetime.
“At this time, I favor a quiet life,” he says. “Folks inform me I’ve to get my identify on the market. No. The story is already there and other people do keep in mind. Every time a participant does a little bit header to himself in a recreation, commentators in Brazil begin speaking about me. ‘The Little Seal! Keep in mind Kerlon?’. Folks do keep in mind.”
I don’t point out all of the messages and emails. It’s all the time a little bit uncomfortable when your interviewee particulars his or her aversion to interviews. Maybe sensing this, Kerlon explains why he agreed to speak.
“While you got here right here to search out me, I felt proud,” he says. “Take a look at us right here now: you’re from England and also you discovered me, hidden away right here. Do you perceive? Look how far my dribble travelled.
“When you had simply known as me, I’d have mentioned I wasn’t . However you discovered me. Thanks for coming. This was good.”
The primary girls and boys at the moment are making their manner onto the coaching pitch. A pair look over, quizzically. I thank Kerlon for his time; he poses for a few images.
There may be, nonetheless, yet another query. I don’t understand how he’ll react to it, however I really feel obliged to ask it anyway.
Can he nonetheless do the seal dribble now?
He smiles. “Simple,” he says, grabbing a ball. He throws it to me and asks me to kick it to him at chest top.
A second or two later, he’s operating throughout the turf, his previous companion in crime dancing on his brow, the many years and the accidents and all of it fading away till solely the mild tap-tap-tap of leather-based on pores and skin stays.
(High images: Getty Pictures; design: Eamonn Dalton)
