Robinho was seventeen when Santos, Pelé’s club, put him on the field as if he were already a seasoned player.
At twenty, he signed for Real Madrid. Then came Manchester City, and later Milan, where he won a Serie A title and an Italian Super Cup. Brazil called him up for two World Cups. Everything in his career was trending upward.
But on January 22, 2013, at a nightclub in Milan, Robinho and five other men raped a 22-year-old Albanian woman. That was the fact his fame could not cover up.
In 2017, a court in Milan sentenced him to nine years in prison. The Court of Appeal upheld the sentence in 2020, saying he had brutally humiliated the victim. In 2022, the sentence became final.
Brazil does not extradite its citizens, so Robinho remained free, training with Santos, living as if nothing had happened. Eleven years passed since the crime.
On March 20, 2024, Brazil’s Superior Court of Justice ruled by a vote of nine to two that the Italian sentence would be served in Brazil. The next day, the Federal Police arrested him and took him to Tremembé, the prison where Brazil keeps its most famous inmates.
Today, Robinho trains other inmates on a concrete court. The man who played alongside Cristiano Ronaldo and Kaká now leads games behind bars.
Some glories are not erased by time. And neither are some wrongs.