So… listen to this… 421 goals, more than Ronaldo, 363 assists, more than Johan Cruyff, all while playing as a midfielder, Alex De Souza, remember the name and tell his story to your children, because they want us to forget him… You see, when you start reading about his story, it feels like you’re reading about some kid who’d go on to become one of the greatest of all time, but then they sabotaged his career not once, not twice, but three different times, in his own words: “They tried to destroy me in every possible way” and they almost managed to do it… They banned him, they exiled him, they scammed him, they robbed him, they sued him…. all because he stood up against the corruption of Brazilian, Italian and then Turkish football… I guess he was just talking too much. And thanks to this, despite taking Brazil to two Copa America titles, one of them as their captain, even wearing the famous number 10 on his back… he still never got called up for a world cup, no matter how much the fans begged for his call up… But still, even in the middle of all that chaos, he kept pushing and pushing, getting the kinds of numbers you’d expect only from Ronaldo and Messi, all while playing some of the most beautiful football you’ll ever see… Even Ronaldinho himself called him a genius, claiming that he was the greatest partner he ever had… which is saying a lot… Alex was like a glitch in the matrix… At 16, playing at Coritiba’s academy and with the club struggling financially, they called almost everyone from their under 20 squad up to the first team… except Alex, since he was by far the youngest in that team… But one day, they needed extra players for a training session so they asked him to come just that one time and well let’s just say that an hour later everyone was convinced it would be a crime to send him back.
On his first appearance, just a few months later, he got an assist, on his second, he got another, by the end of the year, he had a professional contract, had sent Coritiba back to the first tier and had been named Young Player Of The Year. The next season, he led Brazil to win the Toulon Tournament, scoring the goal that put them in the final… and by the time he turned 19, Coritiba had not only handed him the number 10 shirt, but had made him their captain. However, it didn’t last long, only 3 months into the season, he had scored 15 goals in 24 matches, remember….
from midfield, being named the best player at the Paraná Championship and attracting the interest of Palmeiras and Corinthians. Still, before any decisions on that, he joined Brazil for the under 20 world cup. First he destroyed a french team made up of Henry, Anelka and Trezeguet and once in the knockouts, they beat Belgium 10 nil… Alex hit the free kick that led to the first goal, assisted the second, dribbled the keeper to score the fourth, lobbed the keeper for the 5th, assisted the 6th and dribbled the keeper again for the 9th… It’s simply one of the greatest performances I’ve ever seen.
Brazil were on 25 goals in 4 matches but then they shockingly succumbed to Argentina. It happens to the best, I guess. Regardless, once back to the real world, the decision had to be made, Palmeiras or Corinthians?
And it was simple, Alex looked at that Palmeiras squad and realized the timing was perfect. Not only were they sponsored by billionaires Parmalat, but they had just lost Rivaldo, Edmundo, Roberto Carlos, Cafu was on his way as well and had just signed Scolari, who had led Grémio to their golden era just a few years earlier… If he played it right, he could become a legend in no time… And so it was, for 3 million reais, Alex signed for Palmeiras and became the most expensive player to ever come out of Paraná. At first, Scolari strangely even thought about loaning him out, but Alex insisted on staying and it was simple… Every time he came in, he turned the games around.
Before you knew it, he was everyone’s idol, the biggest name in the team. It was that easy for him. In fact, when he arrived midway through the season, one of the first things that shocked the older players was that he kept on insisting that “Next year we’re gonna win the Libertadores, if not next year then the year after that” and he wasn’t wrong… Though they didn’t qualify to the Libertadores in that first year, he took on the Copa Mercosul as a way to prepare for the real deal and the result was incredible.
Alex scored in every single stage of the competition, took the top scorer award and was more than rightfully named the Player Of The Tournament. By the end of the year, he was already debuting for the national team… He had turned 20 years old only a week before…. Regardless, the promise was yet to be fulfilled, so in 1999, the goal was obviously the Libertadores so when he strangely got booed for a bad performance in the last 16 first leg vs Vasco Da Gama, he then scored 2 goals to turn the tie around, eventually losing the first match to River Plate in the semi finals as well, only to again pull of a brace to turn the match around before beating Deportivo De Cali in the final to become a South American Champion at 21… But if conquering the continent once in a year wasn’t enough, then he joined Brazil for the Copa America and won the whole thing as well.
And if at the Copa he wasn’t yet seen as a key player, when the Confederations Cup rolled around the next month, he pulled off 4 goals and 2 assists in 5 matches, taking the top scorer award and becoming the star of the tournament, even though, this time, they would lose the final… Still, to cap off the year, first he went head to head with Ronaldinho, the other great Brazilian talent of the time and destroyed him 6 nil, scoring twice and assisting another… When Ronaldinho was asked about the match a decade later, he said “Don’t remind me of that… The greatest defeat of my life. Don’t ever badmouth Alex in front of me though, it was a gift to play alongside him, he was a genius on the ball”. And finally, well… they faced the treble winning Man United squad for the intercontinental cup and somehow lost… But you have to understand, Palmeiras dominated the match.
Not only did the goal they conceded come from a goalkeeper mistake, but they repeatedly got within inches of scoring and the refereeing was very questionable… not only did Silvestre clearly foul Alex when he was one on one with the keeper, but then Alex actually did score and the goal was wrongfully disallowed… Even more disappointing, with that goal, Alex would have overtaken Raul and Rivaldo for the IFFHS Top International Goalscorer award… Yeah it was an unfortunate day to say the least… But still, Alex’s future looked as bright as it possibly could. He had signed with Puma, he had also signed a modeling contract with Armani, he even married the daughter of Curitiba's president and led Brazil to a victorious campaign at the Pre Olympic tournament where he not only got the captain’s armband and number 10 shirt ahead of Ronaldinho, but was clearly seen as the superior player… as a newspaper wrote: “Ronaldinho always finds a way to get to the ball, but Alex is different, it almost seems like it is the ball that looks for a way to get to him”. In fact, after that tournament, Alex went on vacation but then Scolari came calling, begging him to come back early, saying they couldn’t beat Corinthians without him and very much so against his will, he ended up caving in, arriving an hour before the match, scoring a hat trick to beat them 3 to 1 and going back on vacation… I swear at times, it seemed like this guy wasn’t even real….
and I’d like to add that this match was the quarter final for the Rio Sao Paulo tournament, and once back from vacation, he scored in the semi final and then pulled off 3 assists in the final vs Vasco as well, taking the trophy… He was unstoppable in every sense of the word. In fact, he nearly took a second Libertadores in a row that year, scoring two in the semi finals, as well as assisting a goal in every single one of the 6 matches that led to the final’s second leg, only to eventually lose out on penalties to Boca… Honestly, hearing about his story up to this point, you’re almost led to believe this is the backstory of one of the greatest of all time… It really couldn’t get much better than this… but then they just sabotaged him… I don’t know how else to put it… Following all of these achievements, Parma, who were like the PSG of the 90’s… with Buffon, Thuram, Cannavaro, Crespo and a lot more… Well, they came for Alex and since Palmeiras were also bankrolled by Parmalat, the deal was simple, with 8 million euros, they made him the 3rd most expensive player to ever come out of Brazil, he was even more expensive than Ronaldo’s move to PSV, 5 years prior… but then things quickly felt strange. Alex got to the airport and no one was waiting for him.
Then he realized the club had no intention of presenting him to the fans or the press. Eventually he met with the club’s board and things got shady very quickly with the club proposing this whole scheme where they would pay him through an offshore account in Uruguay… But only after did things derail completely… You see, Alex’s wife was in the meeting but what they didn’t know was that she spoke italian… and soon, she caught them whispering about how they were gonna loan him out to Verona in the second tier… Hearing this, she freaked out and began yelling at them, telling them they had gone crazy, sending one of the best players in the world to a club like that… things quickly got very tense, several loan options began getting discussed… There were Napoli, Marseille and Super Depor, but eventually, starting to feel a little worried with the route his career was taking, Alex asked his father in law to move some strings and ended up joining Flamengo on loan. But if the situation was already dire, then it got worse… Alex joined the national team for the Olympics and disaster struck, Brazil lost to Cameroon… This would be a normal occurrence anywhere else, but in Brazil it was seen as a major humiliation, in the words of Alex: “It was a good generation, but we knew many were going to be left behind after that moment”.
. . But in reality it wasn’t their fault, many players claimed something was wrong with the coach who would not even show up for training sessions most of the time and the delegation was even worse, as a matter of fact, Alex ended up confronting the Olympic Delegation Chief, telling him that he never offered the team any support, that he just wandered around in the Olympic Village and that he was drunk the whole time… Though Alex would never be sure, he believed this confrontation was what put him at odds with the Brazilian football federation… And the consequences would be catastrophic… This whole situation ended up delaying his arrival at Flamengo, by the time he got there, there were only about 2 months left in the season and even worse, the club had sunk into complete chaos.
Alex did not get along with the rest of the team, who would constantly organize these crazy parties with strippers and all. The facilities were a mess, Alex even said the locker room constantly stank and that he had to wash his own kit after every match and even worse, they never paid him a dime… As soon as he could, he forgave their debts in exchange for his release and joined Palmeiras once again, but it was pretty much just more of the same. At Palmeiras, the board signed him against the wishes of the manager who ended up getting sacked shortly after, convincing himself that Alex was to blame for his dismissal, after reading some fake news in some C-tier newspaper.
But still, among all of this, Alex still managed to get Palmeiras to the semi finals of the Libertadores, only getting knocked out after yet another shocking display from the referee, though that wouldn’t stop him from getting 4 goals and 7 assists in 12 matches, topping the assist charts yet again. Nevertheless, then it was time to return to Parma but it was at this point that Alex realized they truly never had any intention of keeping him at the club. Not only were they still refusing to pay him the sign-on bonus he had been promised, but he realized the club signed him only with the goal of using him as a cash cow, loaning him out to one club after the other and collecting all of the fees.
At this point, everyone warned him not to, but after realizing this… Alex sued Parmalat, the company that owned Parma. It was one guy vs one of the biggest companies in Italy. Again, the perfect storm took place, if things were already about to get grim no matter what, then Alex joined Brazil for the 2001 Copa America and with many players refusing to go because of the civil war going on in the host country… Brazil were knocked out by Honduras… Yet another humiliation.
Still, with his mind far from that, Alex went back to Brazil, lawyered up, found a loophole that allowed him to sign for Cruzeiro without Parma’s authorization and the fight for his freedom began. One month later, the Brazilian federation banned him from playing, saying the loophole was invalid, so he took the case to the Parliament's Committee Of Investigation who were already looking into Parmalat and once their attention was directed to Alex’s transfer, the conclusion was immediate: Money Laundering. Not a cent of the money they received from his transfer had been declared to the Central Bank Of Brazil.
Regardless, none of this was enough to get him back on the pitch and with his lawyers saying the case could be dragged on for years, he had a moment of genius. He pretended to be willing to settle for a deal with Parma, got them to sign some papers in which the amount they owed him was stated, backed out and presented those same papers in court. Now he had proof that they knew they were scamming him.
One week later, he was back to playing for Cruzeiro, but even there, well… Remember the manager who was convinced Alex had gotten him sacked at Palmeiras? Well, by the time he got back, he had taken over Cruzeiro and he tried to ruin him any way he could… At one point before a match vs rivals Atletico Mineiro, he literally looked him in the eye and told him: “Today, I’m gonna f*** you over. Now it 's my turn.
I’m gonna play you out of position, you’re gonna be up front all by yourself, let’s see how great you are now”. . .
Well, it backfired. Alex scored twice and was literally named man of the match. Regardless, only like a month and a half later, it was happening again.
Parma faked Alex’s signature in a couple of papers as a way to get revenge for the stunt he had pulled and FIFA ended up banning him from football… When he saw the documents, he thought to himself: “My career is over”. . .
And it almost was if not for one of the greatest fails in history, in the papers, Parma had written the location and date of the signature… One quick check was enough to confirm that at that moment he was with the Brazilian national team far from where they claimed he was and seeing this blatant attempt at conning everyone FIFA decided to postpone any decisions until after the World Cup and gave Alex permission to sign for whoever he wanted till then. And after 3 months without playing, with his only goal being the World Cup, he called Scolari who was now the national team coach and asked him his opinion, to which he told him he would make the list as long as he came back to one of Brazil’s top teams… So Alex joined Palmeiras a third time… But by his fourth match, he somehow was already being booed by the fans, being escorted off the pitch by security after being knocked out of the Brazilian Cup by a third tier club… Little did they know he was playing injured after the manager had insisted he visited a witch doctor instead of actually getting proper rehabilitation… Yes, I’m 100% serious. Regardless, the only way to save his image at that point was to pull of something genius, so precisely one month later, in a match against Kaká’s São Paulo, he pulled off arguably one of the greatest goals of all time, lobbing two defenders and then lobbing the great Rogério Ceni as well… I literally got goosebumps the first time I saw it….
But the most important thing in all of this, was, as Alex put it himself: “I hope this goal was the last push I needed to secure my call up” and to be fair, it already seemed secure, despite all that had happened, Alex had already talked to Scolari about it and he had ensured him that none of this drama would affect his call up… which was why Alex would have meltdown when his name didn’t show up on the TV. The moment Scolari said the last name on the list, with his wife already crying next to him, Alex stepped out of the house, went over to the Palmeiras training grounds and terminated his own contract, he didn’t even wanna be seen stepping on a pitch anymore, it was that humiliating… When he got back to the house, he got good news though… His wife was waiting to tell him she was pregnant until it was time for him to leave for the World Cup… obviously now there seemed to be no reason to wait… but really, there was a light at the end of the tunnel… Emerson, one of the players on the list, ended up getting injured and Alex was by far the favorite to take over his spot… However when Scolari announced the replacement, he instead called up Ricardinho, a player who had barely ever played for the national team, despite being 28 at the time… As Vanderlei Luxemburgo would say: “I think Alex’s absence was a crime” and as Ronaldinho would say: “The entire team was sad when they heard he wasn’t coming. There’s no way to justify what they did to him.
” But that wasn’t even close to the worst thing that happened that day… Upon hearing the news that Alex was out of the team, his wife got so emotional that she began feeling sick and later she ended up losing their baby… This sent Alex into a spiral, he began drinking, he began compulsively eating… he never even left the house because he couldn’t deal with hearing about the world cup, especially when they won the whole thing… At that point, with FIFA’s temporary solution coming to an end, Alex was almost glad that he had to go back to Parma, at least that way he could get away from Brazil and to his shock, upon arrival, Parma informed him that this time, they actually wanted him on the team… The only problem was that by then, he was a fat mess that barely resembled the Alex we had gotten to know… Upon seeing him, they refused to let him train with the team, every training session was focused only on losing weight and though he got fit faster than anyone could imagine… Then they insisted on only calling him up for useless friendlies against bottom of the barrel teams and even though he pulled off 2 goals and 7 assists in the 5 matches he got to play in, shortly after he was called into an office and told that his contract was gonna be terminated… That day, Alex got to his hotel room and cried his eyes out but what Parma didn’t know was that they had just released maybe the best player in the world… Regardless, when Alex got back to Brazil, for the first time ever, there weren’t many clubs looking to sign him… Only São Caetano and Grémio came forward and none of those seem like a good idea… He had finally hit rock bottom, but it was then that Vanderlei Luxemburgo came calling, asking him to join Cruzeiro and telling him: “I’m gonna be honest with you, nobody wants you here, not the fans, not the board, no one, the only reason they allowed me to even talk to you was that I told them that if you didn't’ play well, I would pay your wages myself”. . .
And so with his tail between his legs, Alex got on the plane and took this chance, as he wrote in his autobiography “My face was swollen from all the time I had spent crying. When Vanderlei saw me, he hugged me and told me, together, we would shut their mouths… He promised us he would help us, that everything would be fine. We believed him”.
