Ricardo Schutte

Ricardo Schutte is a Zeerust-born striker playing for Mirandes in LaLiga 2 this season, where he has impressed in what is a highlycompetitive league. He was raised on Madeira, the same Portuguese island that Cristiano Ronaldo hails from, and says he has e

The South African-born striker making waves in Spain, who has his heart set on representing Bafana Bafana.

KICK OFF: You were born in South Africa but have spent most of your life so far in Portugal. Do you know much about the land of your birth and its football? Ricardo Schutte:

Both my parents are South African and I was born in Zeerust [in the North West]. I was almost three years old when we moved to Madeira after my father passed away as my grandparents lived there. I have close family in South Africa still and I went back in 2010. To be honest with you, I don’t know much about the teams in the local championship.

Where did your passion for football come from?

My grandfather, when he was alive, he used to watch the games of the team from our local town in Madeira, Ribeira Brava. I always used to go with him and my mother just had the idea one day that I should start to play. I was so young that there was not a team in my age-group, so I started training alone at home. A local coach saw me and thought I had something, and it started from there.

Madeira is, of course, the birth-place of Cristiano Ronaldo …

Yes, coming from Madeira we always watched Cristiano Ronaldo. I liked Manchester United a lot because of him, then Real Madrid and now Juventus. I am always studying how he plays and he was like a role-model. You don’t realise it until you are on the island, but the best thing that ever happened to Madeira was Cristiano Ronaldo … and for Portugal too. Coming from a small, small island, it is just a great impact that he has had on the local community. Everybody talks about him, everybody loves him. All the young kids on the island who want to be football players, they are inspired by Ronaldo. You look at where he came from, what he did [to be successful], how difficult was his life in Madeira, because he did not come from a stable background in terms of money and so on. So seeing his career and the great player he had become, it is an inspiration for everyone. I will always watch him and try and do the things that he does. I don’t have the same history as him, but it is quite similar. I moved to Portugal [the mainland] when I was 10 and he was

also quite young. I went through the same stuff that he did, with the difficulty in adapting and with the accent from Madeira to Portugal [and the stigma around it]. I felt some of his pain also.

“ME AND MY GRANDMOTHER WERE CRYING ALMOST EVERY NIGHT IN THE BEGINNING.”

You mention you moved to the Portuguese mainland at the age of 10, which was to join the academy of FC Porto, who are obviously a massive club. What was that step up like?

At first I did not believe it was happening. There was a meeting in Madeira and after that the guy from Porto said, ‘I want you to come and play at the club’. When you are a young kid you don’t think of the stuff that your family has to go through to allow you to go play there. Me, I was just like, ‘Grandma, I want to play for Porto’. I didn’t know all the things my family had to change in their lives because of me. Moving to Porto was a completely different environment, the mentality, the training, conditions, everything. I felt like I was growing up so fast. I was alone with my grandmother, who moved with me, through very difficult times. I was young, and like I said previously, with the accent from Madeira, I was bullied a lot in school. Me and my grandmother were crying almost every night in the beginning. Just the two of us alone in a place where we knew noone. It was difficult but the football was going very well, everybody liked me when I was playing. But then my mother and my sister were having difficult times back in Madeira, so my grandmother returned to be with them. I was told that if I want to, I could live with an adoption family for a year. I stayed. It was a great family, they treated me very well. But you are 11 years old and you don’t have any friends or family around you. It is difficult and I was crying all the time.

But it builds character, it made me grow. After that year all my family came to Porto.

You spent three years at the Porto academy, but by the age of 13 had left …

At that time I almost thought I was going to give up. I was thinking, ‘all my family came from Madeira to Porto because I was playing for this big club’. They made all these sacrifices for me and now I am out of Porto. I was going to play for a club [Rio Ave] that is not as big as Porto and I was thinking, ‘we should just go back to Madeira’. But my grandmother always supported me and was telling me everything would be OK. It was a difficult change but actually a very good change for me in the end. Porto is such a big club with great players, but at Rio Ave I had the opportunity to play more and show more of myself and grow as a player.

“I DIDN’T KNOW WHAT TO DO BECAUSE I KNEW NOT MANY TEAMS WOULD WANT ME.”

You actually made your professional debut in the Rio Ave first team in the UEFA Europa League against Jagiellonia Białystok. Were you surprised by that?

I started the pre-season in 2018-19 with the first team and the first games were the qualification matches for the Europa League. We went to Poland and I was in the squad, but did not play. But just being in the squad I was feeling like I was living the dream. In the second leg, we needed to score a lot of goals to progress and I went on for 10 minutes or so. It was really good.

Before that you played in the Rio Ave B side, where you shone, scoring 11 goals in the 2017-18 season. How important was that campaign for your development as a player?

In my first senior year it was very difficult because in the season before I got a very bad injury, I broke my foot and I was out for eight months. I didn’t know what to do because I knew not many teams would want me because I had not played much and I could not show my ability. But Rio Ave created a B team for the first time that season, it was

something that did not exist before. They told me to join them, and it saved me because I started playing and doing good. That is when they called me to the first team. So it turned out to be a good first year, I played a lot of games [26] and had that opportunity to show what I could do. That was the opportunity I needed. I am very thankful for that.

You are on loan at Mirandes in LaLiga 2 this season, how did that move come about?

In Portugal they have this Under-23 championship and it is a league that has a lot of visibility, a lot of clubs look at that league to buy players because they are young and with quality. Mirandes had been watching me since before last season. They actually wanted me for 2019-20, but things did not work out with the negotiation. I had a very good Under-23 championship last year, so they were still interested in me for this year. They continued talking to me and now the deal has gone through. I am very happy to be here.

Has it been an easy adjustment from Portuguese to Spanish football?

It was difficult in that I was used to playing together with friends – we had been together [at Rio Ave] for six or seven years. You build up this understanding. But now I am in a different environment and I need to adapt. Things like the language is similar, but also very different. The football is like a more ‘adult’ football. You need to think more quickly. You need to do the simple stuff really well. You don’t need to exaggerate your movements. Things are a little bit faster, you need to be sharper. So it is similar, just a little bit more of a higher level.

You have been getting regular game-time, how have things gone for you this season?

I have had a few injuries, but in the beginning I was doing very, very well. I had adapted quickly to the team and was playing 90 minutes every game. Then I had a little injury, then another one and another one. But now I am coming back and much stronger again. I am really enjoying it and learning a lot. It is the year that I am learning the most. If you play in the first team in this league consistently, then you are going to show your quality and people are going to know about you. A lot of people watch [LaLiga 2], there is a lot of quality and it is a very tough championship.

We know you are a striker, but can you describe your playing style?

I am more like a number 10, 1 I love to be free, I am not n a striker that is only i nside the box. I am more of a creative player that passes and a uses movement. I can go g down the line, or in the middle. m I can go fetch the ball b close to the midfield. Like L I said, I like to be free.

Have you set any personal p goals for this campaign? c

I have goals, I want to play p a lot of minutes, the most I can do. d Because at the end of the season you are judged on how many minutes you play. If you play a lot of minutes in this league, it means you have quality. I don’t have personal goals, like I want to score 15 goals, 10 assists or anything like that. It will come naturally if I play. I still have a one-year contract with Rio Ave, but I want to finish this season strong, do the best I can and then discuss my contract with the team.

“I LOVE TO BE FREE, I AM NOT A STRIKER THAT IS ONLY INSIDE THE BOX.”

You are obviously eligible to play for South Africa – be it in the Olympic team or Bafana Bafana. Is this something that interested you?

Yes, for the last two years I have thought a lot about playing for South Africa. I think I can help the team, if they like me, if they like my style of play and if they think I am good enough. I would be very happy to play for the country. I would love to go to the Olympic Games.

There are South Africans who are currently playing in the Primeira Liga in Portugal such as Luther Singh, Thibang Phete and Lyle Foster. Do you know much about them?

I have watched quite a bit of Luther Singh because I have a friend who played with him at Sporting Braga. He told me a lot about him and said what a good player he is. You can see it now, he is having a very good season at Paços de Ferreira. I watched him recently against FC Porto and he did very, very well.