The 26 players who will defend Brazil at the Qatar World Cup started their careers with 18 different clubs. São Paulo leads the statistic, being the first professional club of four called up by coach Tite: defenders Éder Militão and Bremer, midfielder Casemiro and striker Antony.
Bremer, however, needs an asterisk, as he’s the only one who hasn’t defended the main squad. The defender played two professional games (both coming off the bench) in Copa Paulista, a state tournament held in the second half, by Tricolor’s B team. From São Paulo, he went to Atlético-MG, where he played the first matches of his career for team A.
Goalkeeper Alisson and midfielder Fred debuted as professionals at Internacional. Corinthians was the team in which defender Marquinhos and midfielder Éverton Ribeiro started their respective careers. América-MG gave the first opportunities to the side Danilo and the striker Richarlison. Midfielder Lucas Paquetá and forward Vinícius Júnior made their debut for Flamengo, while forwards Neymar and Rodrygo first wore the Santos shirt.
Nine more Brazilian clubs were responsible for the first professional experience of the national team called up. They are: Remo (goalkeeper Weverton), Bahia (wing-back Daniel Alves), RS Futebol (defender Thiago Silva), Athletico-PR (wing-back Alex Sandro), Juventude (wing-back Alex Telles), Audax-SP (wing-back midfielder Bruno Guimarães), Palmeiras (forward Gabriel Jesus), Fluminense (forward Pedro) and Ituano (forward Gabriel Martinelli).
Ederson, Fabinho and Raphinha started their careers abroad. The Manchester City (England) goalkeeper started in Ribeirão, in Portugal’s third division. The Liverpool midfielder (England) made his first game in the second tier of the Spanish league, for Real Madrid Castilla, which is the B team of the current European champions. The forward of Barcelona (Spain), in turn, went to the field for the first time wearing the shirt of the team B of Vitória de Guimarães, in the second level of Portuguese football.
The club where the athlete became professional, however, is not necessarily the one where he trained (or part of it). Weverton, for example, started at the base of Juventus-AC and went to the under-20 of Corinthians after standing out for the Acre team in the 2005 Copa São Paulo de Futebol Júnior. The goalkeeper, however, never played for Timão, loaned to Remo (where he played the first game of his career), Oeste and América-RN, over three seasons.
Thiago Silva is another case. Created in Fluminense’s base categories, the defender debuted as a professional on loan at RS Futebol, in the third division of Rio Grande do Sul, in 2003. He was loaned to Juventude, Porto’s B team (Portugal) and Dínamo Moscow (Russia), until, finally, wearing the Tricolor carioca shirt in an official match for the first time, three years later.
There are situations in which players have not even had the opportunity to represent the clubs that formed them. Raphinha, for example, was traded to Vitória de Guimarães without a single game for Avaí, where he was a promise. The same situation as Fabinho, who arrived at Fluminense in 2011, after defending Paulínia-SP in the Copa São Paulo, but left the following year for Rio Ave (Portugal), who loaned him to Real Madrid Castilla.
Fred, in turn, left Atlético-MG at the age of 16 for the now defunct Porto Alegre Futebol Clube, then migrated to Inter, where he turned professional. Bremer, before São Paulo and Galo, was linked to Desportivo Brasil-SP between 2014 and 2017. The club from Porto Feliz (SP), traditional in the formation, lent him to São Paulo in 2016 and negotiated it with the miners in the year Following. Tricolor, by the way, even had Ederson as the base’s goalkeeper in 2008, when he was 15 years old, but dismissed him over the phone.
Of the 26 called up by Tite, only one still has a connection with any of the clubs where he was part of the training process. Forward for Flamengo and professionalized at Fluminense, Pedro lived almost five years at the red-black base, where he made the transition from futsal to the field, coming from Tricolor itself, until being released in 2013. After playing for Duquecaxiense-RJ and Artsul-RJ , he returned to the Laranjeiras team in 2014, debuting in the first team three years later.
