the long road home

tim parks, in one of his many moments of genius, came up with this description of professional footballers:

"they are simultaneously proud of what they have achieved and afraid of seeming stupid...always supervised, they haven't had time to develop...only when they run out through the players' tunnel into the big green stadium can they unleash all their pent-up emotion...immensely privileged, they are hopelessly deprived."

fabulous stuff, i'm sure you'll agree. those words have stayed with me since i first read them, and i've thought of them a number of times this week; as robinho has seen out what will, in all probability, turn out to be his final days in manchester.

in the last 18 months, it's been happening often. adriano, broken down psychologically and physically by life in europe, returned first to sao paulo, then to his boyhood team flamengo. in the same year ronaldo, the greatest striker of the last 20 years but with knees incapable of standing up to the pace of the european game, joined corinthians. he has been joined this season by roberto carlos, for one last tilt at the libertadores. vagner love, one half of a uefa cup-winning partnership, and the best player in russia for a time, failed on his return to palmeiras, but has now formed a partnership with adriano at flamengo. his CSKA moscow companion jo (a £19 million signing never given a chance under mark hughes) is now on loan at galatasaray, after returning to brazil without permission. another to break the rules of his club and return home has been anderson, who, it is reported in brazil, is in discussions with vasco da gama. at 21, the belief in rio is that he has already begun to have doubts. his teammates rafael and fabio, brought to manchester from rio at the ages of 16, have been quoted in brazil as saying how cold europe is, how poor the nightlife in manchester is, how they speak to their friends at home every day.

of those 9 players, 7 are within or approaching the age range where they should be at the peak of their powers. yet the brazilian game (which has recently opened 2010 with the state championships) is littered with players who have been to europe, and, for whatever reason, returned. clearly each case is different, and i'll leave the generalisations to the british media, but the case of robinho shows that if the player is not happy, it is unlikely that any amount of money or adulation will induce them to stay.

and those are just the names that we are familiar with. trawling through lists of squads from clubs around the world, i am regularly struck by the sheer size of the brazilian diaspora. here is a nation which is so rich in footballing talent, but for the majority of the 192 million inhabitants, such a crushingly difficult place to eke out a life of comfort; that families pin their hopes on their sons. some of them, like robinho, will be laden with multi-million pound contracts at the biggest clubs in the world. others will depart on the promise of a trial, on the words of an agent or investment group. but whether it's manchester city or turan tovuz (of the azerbaijan premier league, where attacking midfielder junivan earns a living) paying their wages, the majority of the money goes back home. and mentally, many of them never leave.

in a country where footballing excellence is so bound up with national identity, it's hardly surprising that many brazilian players speak of playing in europe in terms of familial duty. players often become mechanised, can't adapt to an unfamiliar way of living, and lose the joy of football. this is not unique to brazilians, but the example of adriano is particularly acute in displaying how sometimes the only place where people can live normally is home, even if home is one of the worst favelas in rio.

in the wire, the greek said that the world is a smaller place now. he might have been talking about international crime, but he could just as easily have been discussing football. but too often we discuss globalisation using a western perspective, where the internet means that i can watch games played thousands of miles and numerous time zones away, at any time i choose. but, as many pundits would do well to learn, the west is not the world. rereading the story of garrincha, beautifully told by alex bellos, i'm taken to visit one of his many children, who has never left her home state. and i'm reminded that manchester is still a long way from sao vicente.