He unearthed Robinho, found Neymar Jr too

SANTOS:TWENTY years ago, a coach named Betinho was watching a game of beach football when he spotted a skinny boy of six sprinting up and down the terracing, faster than he’d ever seen someone of that age. It was Neymar. The boy, who would one day turn into the world’s most expensive footballer, dashed around that afternoon in 1998 near Santos under the eye of his mother. His father, a recently retired professional right-back, played in an amateur game on the sand. The experienced Betinho took it all in.

“This is how I saw it,” Betinho, 60, said in the small town of Sao Vicente, where he still lives, not far from the beach where he struck footballing gold. “The father plays well, the mother is tall, so if the boy turns out thin like her, and with his father’s game, it will work.” Betinho knew what he was talking about.

Eight years earlier he’d discovered Robinho, who would go on to shine at Pele’s old club Santos, then play for Real Madrid, Manchester City, AC Milan and in two World Cups with Brazil. What Betinho didn’t know was that he’d just spotted someone better.

Approaching the parents, he asked if he could take the kid they called “Juninho” — the diminutive of Junior, which is how relatives still call the star — to train with the area futsal team, Gremetal. They agreed. “All my career I wanted to find a player who could summon up the spirit of Pele. Lightening struck twice for me,” Betinho said. Betinho and Neymar stuck together in a journey that led from club to club before the prodigy was signed up to Santos FC’S training at the age of 11. The slender, skilled dribbler’s reputation preceded him.

“We already knew who Neymar was. They were already taking care of him as if he was a future great,” said his friend Pedro Lopes at Gremetal, where they first met 16 years ago. Neymar was only nine when he arrived, but after just two training sessions he was moved up an age category. “In most of our games, we’d pass the ball to him and wait for him to dribble through half the opposing team,” Lopes says.

To fans, Neymar has often come across as a spoiled playboy, never happier than when showing off his latest tattoo on Instagram. “He’s someone with incredible energy, happiness, an extrovert who always feels good about life. When I’m down, I try to get close to him because he transmits huge positivity,” Lopes said.

With his dyed hair, tatoos and similar love of Instagram, Lopes fits right in with Neymar’s band of friends who call themselves the “Tois.” The gang rallied around the Paris Saint-germain forward when he flew home for surgery on a broken foot bone in February.

One of Neymar’s moraleboosting requests was for Lopes to bring him a Gremetal shirt to put in his collection. It was a moment of nostalgia. But as his discoverer Betinho says, Neymar’s roots are already far behind.