Blessed by Jesus Favela sports giant mural of young Brazil star
was paid for by one of his sponsors.
Jardim Peri is such a big part of Brazil’s number nine’s life that he tattooed the favela on his right arm. Pictures of the region are in all his social media channels. Friends and family still live there. “I left Peri, but Peri has never left me,” he often says in interviews to Brazilian media.
Few players in the World Cup in Russia have lived changes as dramatic as Jesus from one tournament to the other.
WALK TO PRACTICE
When Brazil hosted the last World Cup, Jesus could barely afford bus fares to go to training sessions at a northern São Paulo club. That meant he had to walk in flip-flops for almost two miles so he could attend practice. Whenever he had some change, friend Gisele Xavier remembers, he spent it at her bar buying candy.
“He has always had a childish taste for food. He loves soft drinks and cookies,” Xavier said in her bar, with several shirts donated by Jesus on her wall. “I never saw him drinking beer, even when he was here watching World Cup games four years ago.”
Luis Diniz, one of the uncles of the striker, has lived in Jardim Peri for 30 years and misses his nephew running around and celebrating goals as if he was Carlos Tevez, a Corinthians player between 2005 and 2006. A decade later, Jesus would hit the limelight playing for their archrivals, Palmeiras.