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Roberto Firmino: From Rags to Riches


Roberto Firmino is one of the most exciting players in the world. He has dazzled the world ever since he joined Liverpool in 2016 and he has made the Premier League more exciting with his passion and skills on the field. In this article I will go through the Brazilian’s career and how he made his way to become one of the greatest strikers playing in Europe today.



Firmino’s start in Brazil: CRB & Figureirense

Roberto Firmino was born on the 2nd day of October 1991 in Maceió, Brazil. He was born and raised in a dangerous neighbourhood. The place he lived in was infested with gangs and dangerous people so Firmino’s mother was afraid to let him play football on the streets. Later she realised that playing football would be Firmino’s way to get out of poverty. His first club was for a Brazilian team called CRB (Clube de Regatas Brasil). Firmino’s first manager at CRB highly praised Firmino’s recent success, adding: “He was born to be a striker” (Globoesporte) There are not a lot of records of his time there but he spent his first four years in his youth career at CRB. He was discovered and was mainly used as a defensive midfielder. In 2008 he joined Figureirense, a team that currently plays in Série B. In 2010 he scored his first professional goal and finished the season with 8 goals in 36 appearances. His performance caught the attention of an ambitious German club, Hoffenheim 1899.



Hoffenheim 1899

Hoffenheim put their money where their mouth was and bought Firmino for 3.5 million pounds. He was only 19 years old when he joined the former club of Gylfi Sigurdsson. His love for Germany was incredible. He has a tattoo written in German that says: “Family unending love”. It is not known when he got that particular tattoo but it is most likely that he got it during his time at Hoffenheim. He did not have a fantastic start at Hoffenheim, experiencing some troubles like: showing up late to training and therefore missing out on a first team spot for some time. It wasn’t until in the 2012-13 season that we saw the young Brazilian play properly. He scored seven goals that season. His next season we saw an already great player get better and stunning the Bundesliga fans with his impact and presence on the pitch. His finishing was and still is impeccable and he was one of the most confident players playing that season. He finished the season as the fourth-highest goal scorer in the league with 16 goals, catching the attention of many big clubs in England, most notable ones being: Manchester United and Liverpool.



FIFA 14 TOTS

His performance in the 2013-14 season earned him a great honor in the footballing world: A Team of the Season card in the popular football video game: FIFA. Judging from his statistics on his card his dribbling, passing and shooting are one of the best in the world. Many young people play FIFA so they probably knew a lot about Firmino before his arrival due to this specific card. In the 2013-14 season he was named the Bundesliga Breakthrough of the season.



Firmino and Depay

After putting on a yet another great performance in the 2014-15 season, Brendan Rodgers, the then Liverpool manager, was convinced that Firmino was the perfect player for Liverpool. Firmino and Memphis Depay were one of the biggest names in the 2015 summer transfer window, and many Liverpool fans (including me) were more excited to get Depay because of his breathtaking season in the Eredevise for PSV Eindhoven and because of his great contribution in winning the league title that season. This could have gone either way. Firmino could have gone to Man U and Depay could have gone to Liverpool. I actually screamed: “No!” when I saw that Depay was confirmed as a Man U player but I was pretty happy to see Firmino join Liverpool.



Liverpool: Arrival

Firmino officially joined Liverpool on 4th of July 2015 for 29 million pounds. A pretty good deal compared to some of the other deals that some big clubs have made. His competitive debut goal came against a stunning 4-1 victory away against Manchester City. Despite his good start at Liverpool he still struggled forming a partnership with the Belgian strong-man, Christian Benteke, a player that now currently plays for Crystal Palace. Before Firmino’s arrival, Liverpool’s attack was uninspiring, boring, unorganized and just bad. Rickie Lambert, Mario Balotelli and Fabio Borini were obviously not going to help Liverpool compete for the league or a Champions League spot.


PHOTO: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/385057836871306967/


Firmino & Klopp

When Firmino joined Liverpool, the five time Champions League winners were finally starting to play well. You could definitely see a correlation between his performances for Hoffenheim and his performances for Liverpool. It helped Firmino a lot to have Jurgen Klopp as a manager due to the German’s experience in the Bundesliga. Klopp understands how a Bundesliga player behaves and plays like. While Klopp was the manager of Borussia Dortmund, he wanted to bring Firmino to his side. According to GiveMeSport, Klopp said: “I knew about Roberto. When I heard that Liverpool had signed him I thought: ‘how have they done this?’”. Klopp was thrilled to have the opportunity to take Firmino under his wing and to be a sort-of a father figure to the Brazilian.



Firmino at Liverpool so-far: Stats

Firmino has made 93 league appearances and scored 34 goals, 13 of them coming this season, making him the 5th highest goal scorer in league. Despite not being one of the highest assist makers in the league he still has an impressive amount of assists (6). His record in the Champions League this season is incredibly impressive (8 goals and 5 assists in 9 games). His previous season for Liverpool, although not glamorous, was still pretty good. He scored 11 league goals in 35 appearances. In Firmino’s first season he scored 10 league goals in 24 appearances.



International career

Firmino’s International career is just starting to rise to a level that has no limits. He is finally starting to get many opportunities in the international squad and he deservedly got picked in the World Cup 2018 Brazilian squad. After being picked for the international team he stayed incredibly humble, saying: “I’m very happy about the nomination and would especially like to thank the team” (Wikipedia). He has only made 18 international appearances in the Brazilian national team and scored 5 goals. His debut International game came against Turkey in a 4-0 victory and he scored his first goal six days later. He has no experience playing for the youth international teams, a pretty rare record for such a world class player. Firmino will most likely be in the starting 11 in the World Cup this year where he is sure to make an impact.



Conclusion (personal opinion)

Firmino is a fantastic player with a professional attitude. He is incredibly talented and watching him play football is incredibly entertaining. As a Liverpool fan I find Firmino to be incredibly exciting and fun to watch. You can just see how comfortable he is on the pitch and how he can play alongside everybody in the team. Firmino’s career is unclear but if he continues to play like he plays now it is certain that teams like: PSG, Real Madrid and Barcelona will knock on Liverpool’s door in the coming years.



Post by: Ólafur Hálfdan Pálsson

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