Richarlison’s rise from Brazil rags to Prem riches I ran 6 miles to training once with ripped trainers... I had to keep stopping to stuff my sock back into m y sh oe

TWEETS SAY JOSE’S A GONER

JOSE MOURINHO is the most talked-about manager in the Premier League.

The Manchester United boss is the Special One when it comes to generating traffic on Twitter, racking up an incredible 582,853 tweets this season alone. In fact, he’s in a league of his own. Mourinho has so far produced almost as much traffic on the popular social media platform as all the other top-flight bosses combined.

His 19 Premier League rivals accounted for a grand total of 663,602 tweets from the start of the season to September 2, with Arsenal’s Unai Emery on 146,600 and Jurgen Klopp of Liverpool on 128,630.

Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola is currently languishing in sixth place on 55,201 tweets, well behind both Chelsea’s Maurizio Sarri and under-fire Newcastle boss Rafa Benitez.

Worrying

And Guardiola’s numbers are less than one-tenth of those being hit by his greatest rival.

It confirms that Mourinho and United are an explosive mix when it comes to firing up the fans.

But the worrying conclusion from a new study conducted by data analysts at online gaming company Betvictor, is that the 55-year-old Portuguese will be sacked if a trend identified last season continues into this campaign.

That’s because Mourinho is also near the top of the table when it comes to negative tweets.

And last year, three of the four managers who generated the highest percentage of critical traffic – Ronald Koeman, Antonio Conte and Mauricio Pellegrino – ended up getting the chop. Mourinho is following a similar pattern. Nineteen per cent of tweets about the United boss fall into the negative category. Only Benitez has a bigger cut.

And Cardiff’s Neil Warnock and Emery EVERTON’S record £50million signing Richarlison has never forgotten his upbringing on the tough streets of Nova Venecia.

Drugs and gun crime in the impoverished area of south east Brazil left many of his boyhood mates behind bars – or worse.

But the squalor somehow bypassed football-mad Richarlison as he dreamed of one day earning enough to give his hard-up family a better life.

Now as he prepares for his first senior international cap for his country in friendlies against the USA and El Salvador the former Watford forward reflects on his poverty-stricken upbringing.

Money

“A lot of my friends are in jail or dead as they got caught up in the world of drugs and guns,” says Richarlison. “I was in the middle of it all, as where I lived was a drug-dealing spot. I never got involved in any of it.”

But the potential to earn decent money by turning to crime would have raced through a young Richarlison’s mind as he tried desperately to make his way up the football ladder.

At the age of 10 he joined a local football academy, but added: “I had no trainers to play so I went barefoot. Everyone else had trainers.

“I also remember running six miles to training one day with ripped trainers. The sock kept coming out of the shoe, so I’d have to stop and tuck it in.”

There was also the time he had to wait more than 10 hours in a bus station in the cold and rain on the way home after being rejected by Figueirense, a small club more than 1,000 miles from Nova Venecia.

“My coach told me to never give up as I was still very young,” he said. “I continued working are the only two managers to have accounted for a bigger percentage of angry tweets than Mourinho (right).

The data has been pulled directly from Twitter.

It includes official club hashtags, social handles, unofficial hashtags, club names, managers’ names and variants and club location.

Arsene Wenger generated most tweets last season – 3,150,293 – putting him more than 200,000 ahead of Mourinho.

To explore the full dataset about every premier league manager for 2017/18 and 2018/19, visit: https://blog.betvictor.com/campaigns/mosttalked-about-managers/ towards my dream.” The youngster was eventually taken on by Brazilian second-tier club America Mineiro – and quickly helped them win promotion.

“It was a wonderful year for me because it was the year I achieved my goal of buying a house for my dad,” he added.

A move to leading samba club Fluminense soon followed, together with a call-up to the Brazil Under-20 squad and in September 2016 he scored in a 1-1 draw against England at St George’s Park.

He said: “It was my first time away from Brazil. I was quite startled as I’d never travelled that far on a plane.”

Within 12 months he had signed for Watford and was playing under now Everton boss Marco Silva, who sanctioned his recordbreaking transfer to Merseyside. “I came to England to make a name for myself in the best league in the world,” Richarlison told Everton’s official matchday programme.

“It was difficult. I wasn’t used to temperatures of minus five and the snow was a bit tough. But I found a Brazilian supermarket with the rice, beans and meat I like.”

Deprived

And in May there was plenty of rice, beans and meat being distributed after he helped organise a charity football game in his home city, which attracted a crowd of 3,000.

He explained: “We also collected three tons of food which we distributed in the deprived areas of my town.

“These are my roots where I was born and where I came to play football. It’s the least I could do for my people.”

A three-game ban following his red card last Saturday against Bournemouth means he won’t be back in action until Everton’s trip to Arsenal on September 23.

But compared with what he has been through that is a blip in the story of a brilliant young talent.