When Endrick was 17 and about to sign with Real Madrid, he sat down to write a letter to his 4-year-old brother Noah before leaving for Spain.
In it, he doesn’t talk about goals or contracts: he talks about his mother, Cintia, sleeping on a mattress on the floor and praying alone in a park; he talks about his father, Douglas, sleeping under the shelter of a stadium’s ticket booths.
Three generations of his family pursued the same dream because they had no other way out, but Noah would no longer have to suffer the same fate as his ancestors.
“You can be a footballer, if you want. But you don’t have to be one. There’s no more stress. Thank God, thank the mother and father, and thank football. I want you to enjoy your life however you want, brother. It’s my gift to you”.
“You can be a doctor, a lawyer”. You can be a footballer too, of course, but no longer out of obligation. Endrick paid for the freedom he gives his younger brother through sacrifice.