#mazinho

Robinson: “Today, there is a special visit. I have the pleasure to have three members of a family marked by success. If becoming successful in the football world is a dream at the reach of not many, that your children reach it after you have, it’s close to impossible.”

Robinson as they are waiting at the door: “Come on up.”

Robinson greets both Alcantara brothers: “It has been years since I’ve wanted talking to you but it never happened.”

Thiago: “We had to both play in television for you to come talk to us.”

Robinson: “You are in Germany and you stayed here. Come on in, let’s talk for a while.”

Watching Mazinho on TV

Robinson: “Thiago, how did you saw your father as a footballer?”

Thiago: “For me is the example of everything. Get to see him play and then his football behavior outside of the pitch…”

Rafinha: “He has always been a strict father and I think that it has been a very positive point in our education.”

Mazinho: “In my house we were seven brothers, and at 10 at night I had to be home. If not my mother waited for me with a belt. Thank God I got to a point that my head gave me some kind of signal to be home if not bim bam boom pan. With many women and drugs, I wasn’t going to get anywhere. At that point I knew what I wanted. But not my father, my father didn’t let me play football.”

Rafa: “He had a humble childhood where he had to work to get what he most dreamed of which was to be a football player.”

Robinson: “What memories do you have about this? Do you have fresh memories?” Mazinho: “Yes. I remember everything perfectly, that historic moment in my life and my mark as a footballer. I remember everything about that World Cup.”

Mazinho watching his World Cup on laptop: “The first World Cup that ended with penalties. I don’t remember of any other final ending like that. It’s a terrible moment. Moments of not knowing what will happen. It is the moment. And the moment happened and that’s the best trophy I have.”

Robinson: “There you are in Valencia, and it comes to my attention that Thiago and Rafa are eyeing your shirt in a different way.”

Mazinho laughing: “That was another time.”

Robinson: “It was free, right?”

Mazinho: “Yeah it was free.”

Thiago: “They got paid. They got paid to wear that.”

Robinson: “Did you have good times in Valencia?”

Mazinho: “I spent fantastic moments there. In the city, that team. And I worked strictly because Luis told me ‘At 30 years old, football is dead. It’s done.’ And I went on vacation, and I met the Celta Vigo technical director Juan Postal de Diego.”

Valeria: “We got there in summer and they took us to the islands. Then, of course, summer, sun, a lot of beaches, ocean and mountains. And you feel that small breeze, you know?”

Mazinho: “I sign the contract. I’m going home. When I come back, well…When I come back it was all rain. We loved it a lot.”

Javier Lugo: “One day, Mazinho came by with his two kids, the most curious thing is that when Rafinha arrived, he came as a goalkeeper.”

Valeria: “It was very fun, because in the first half he was a player and in the second half he was a goalkeeper.”

Mazinho: “Player or Goalkeeper?”

Robinson: “Did you liked that of throwing yourself or how was that?”

Rafinha: “Yeah, I loved it. I loved it because in the time of Celta I always looked at the goalkeeper with his clothe.”

Valeria: “Yeah but Rafa liked the goalkeeper clothing. He loved all that he had to put on, the gloves, the clothe.”

Javier Lugo: “And Thiago, he was of the best that we saw in Galecia in a lot of time. The difference that we had with other players was that they (Alcantara brothers) trained. They were so competitive, that they always looked for the best. Here we reached things that we never thought we could all get.”

Thiago: “We won against el Lopro (?) , we won against Celta, we won against Madrid. We won against the most important ones.”

Valeria: “The men would go by Mazinho and say ‘Thank you for occupying me on a Sunday or Saturday to Eureka just to see your children.”

Videos of Thiago and Rafinha playing, as children and older.

Robinson: “And you didn’t save any kicks.”

Rafinha: “That was when we felt strong.”

Thiago: “That was the age when we felt like rubber.”

Robinson: “I think that was when it started the knee problems. Rafa was thinking ‘What you did was of youngsters’ “

Thiago: “There, there it started.”

Rafinha: “It always happens, the oldest passes the youngest.”

Rafinha: “I could’ve-I could’ve broken my neck there. See?”

Thiago: “He was an artist, trust me.”

Rafinha: “Elbow…the head. I’m alive by miracle.”

Robinson as Thiago sits before Rafa on TV: “At least he looked after you.”

Rafinha: “Yeah sure. He looked at me, he didn’t apologize, he looked at me….Thank God I’m still walking.”

Mazinho: “I was the player that had played the most games, a player that was never off the pitch. A player that gave more than the 100%. After I had the injuries…”

Thiago: “They behaved very bad with him, after everything that he gave to the club at a professional level. They worked very wrongly with him.”

Valeria: “You can’t abandon a player in the bad moments.”

Mazinho: “We are material. We are product. That’s what we are. In football, we are just marketing, negotiations. I have my great friends there. Those people are my friends too. In their conscious each know if that they made a mistake or not.”

Robinson: “A family that had always been very close, and then the sad moments in 2005 happened.”

Mazinho: “It was a year that we separated, just when Thiago came here (Barcelona), in August 2005.”

Robinson: “And Thiago how hard was it at the Masia?” (Referring to the break up of his parents while he was there)

Thiago: “It was great because you were at Barca, but it was harder than beautiful. Then its a phase where you are away from your family when it has that big problem, and you are not with your siblings in that moment. Then it gives you like some sort of guilty, of responsibility to protect them.”

Robinson: “And how did you took it Rafa?”

Rafinha: “I had very bad memories, at a sport level and studies. It was certainly a bad time.”

Valeria: “Most of the times kids think that because of them they broke up, you know?”

Thaisa: “Thiago is…like an old man inside of a young body.”

Rafinha: “We are very alike, but at the same time different. My brother is more serious…”

Thaisa: “And Rafa a kid…a kid kid, in the body of a man.”

Thiago: “He (Rafa) doesn’t worry much.”

Rafinha: “I played football, but I- Its not like I didn’t took it seriously, but I never thought that I’d be at Barca, and with 13 years my father tells me that we had to visit my brother and I was very glad. While we are at the couch he tells me ‘While your brother is training, why don’t you go do the tests?’ and, I passed. Imagine the happiness of being back with my brother.”

Robinson: “Me as an associate…”

Thiago: “Not as a fan, as an associate”

Robinson “Me as a fan of Barca, I imagine that during the day, it costs me to see Thiago in Munich”

Thiago: “The highest that a kid sees itself is at Barca, because they make it the best, where you are doing great, and you are in a club that is spectacular, and the decision isn’t easy.”

Valeria: “The dream of any kid, of any club is to be in the first team and then, when you don’t see you don’t have opportunity, it’s not that you close the doors and leave. You leave and one day you come back.”

Thiago: “And with the call with the pen and paper, well, look, the best trainer in the world is calling me in a great team like Bayern. Like, please, it’s not that I didn’t think about it twice is that it was easier for me to go.”

On the radio while Thiago drives: “Guardiola told his bosses at Bayern that Thiago was the only player that he needed and it was given to him. Two Spaniards reunited in Bundesliga, at the top club in Europe.”

Thiago: “When Javi got here and I was alone, the only Spaniard.”

Javi: “Yeah when I got here I was alone and at the beginning I never got to know anything.”

Xabi: “Here what costs the most is the language, to understand how life works, communicate with German people. The barrier is the language.”

Javi: “When I got here I thought that the Germans were a bit boring and stayed home. That I’d blend in well.”

Thiago: “Here, drinking a beer is the most normal thing in the world. Actually when you are around they always invite you for a beer. Here beer is cultural.”

Javi; “I think that most people think that when you get here is easy, that the rivals are weak and that’s totally false. Every team comes out giving the 200 times 5 against us and that’s hard too.”

Thiago: “You look for big clubs at the end, looking for bigger challenges…

Xabu: “ And the level of excellence is high too. Here winning is given, the thing is that you have to make more goals and play very well.”

Juan: “What about signing the cards?”

Thiago; “Every three weeks they gave us these small bags with one thousand pictures to sign up and we got like, two weeks? To sign them all.”

Xabi: “What I didn’t know was that every time a person writes to Bayern, they send them a picture of each one of us.”

They all talk and joke about the cards.

Rafinha with his friends.

Rafinha: “I think that to define a Brazilian is the happiness.”

Rafinha: “Brazukas was a group of five Brazilians that formed in Barca.”

Neymar: “Yeah, it’s a group that we had on whatsapp, the Brazilians, still do.”

Rafinha: “Neymar, Douglas, Dani Alves, Aderiano and me…”

Neymar: “The others left, and Rafa and I are the only ones left…He is going to get mad at me…But the nickname Princesa (princess), I call him like that because I love him a lot, of course, and for being a princess.”

Thaisa: “Yeah, Rafa is a princesa, very smug and he dresses himself a lot and…he is like a princesa overall…”

Xavier: “Now everybody calls him Princesa, in the locker room and outside. He is going to stay Princesa.”

Robinson: “I know you are a Brazilian because I just saw you lifting up the World Cup, this…this doesn’t costs…”

Mazinho: “The jersey is always a heavy weight that we have. Every Brazilian always wears it, including Thiago…But if you have the opportunity that the national team doesn’t open the doors for you and other does, that gives you a lot of affection ever since you started, you can’t say no. I’m happy Thiago is with the Spaniards.”

Robinson: “And vice versa is applicable in the case of Rafa, because he was born in Brazil, and then…Was it always your dream to play in Brazil?”

Rafinha: “Yes…I- opposite as my brother, and because he was part of the selection ever since he was 15 and has spent so much time there in Spain. I feel myself very Brazilian, and even more than him for being longer there.”

Valeria: “And one day Rafa said ‘I don’t want to go more to the inferior team because then Brazil would never call me.’ “

Rafinha: “And that’s when I took the decision with 19 years old, to wait and see if the selection would call me. Thank God, I got it.”

Robinson: “And we are going to keep talking about knees…You (Thiago) in Munich, everything was going well, there was an airplane waiting for you to take you to the World Cup and then the knee…”

Thiago: “It’s a story that now I can tell and live it happy, because I’m alright now, but in the moment…It was horrible. It was a process, not so much physical but very complex too…”

Valeria: “Thiago had many ugly phases where he thought if he’d play again or not.”

Thiago: “It felt like there was no going back, that this knee was going to take me to a day where I’d have to play with a bandage on it and that the knee would be almost inmobile.”

Rafinha: “For me it was much harder to see my brother one year without playing then when I got injured…”

Thiago: “And above everything, just when I get better and I’m out, then it’s the next’s (Rafa) turn.”

Rafa: “The only thing I remember is saying ‘Not now. Not now’. It was the only thing that went through my mind, ‘Not now. Not now’, but well…You try to get your head in the situation that you have to be six months without doing what you love the most. That made me see things from a different way.”

Xavier: “A lot of guitar, yes. He spent all the evenings playing the guitar at my house.”

Valeria: “When you get to overcome this, you come out strong.”

Thiago: “The biggest lie in the world, the only thing that it makes you learn things that can make you stronger, but the most sane thing is to never get injured.”

Neymar: “Rafa was nervous because of the injury he had.”

Rafinha: “My head was in going back to Barca, but logically I had one of the most important date to go to, the Olympics. I went to run the medical test and they told me that it was almost impossible that I would make it in good condition.”

Neymar: “He spent a hard time in Brazil.”

Mazinho: “The worry, the tension because you know it is a competition that Brazil has never won…”

Neymar: “It was a hard time the first matches, the press started to talk bad about our team.”

Rafinha: “When the final came by…Imagine, something that looked almost impossible to a miracles work. The coach asked who wanted to take the penalties and I remember thinking that it was always better to shoot first, just in case. And I remember that Renato Augusto called the first one, wanted to be the second one Marquinhos asked first, the third I said ‘This one is closer to the fifth..’ “

Mazinho: “His behavior was as if he was ready for a moment like that…”

Thaisa; “I said, ‘My brother is going to miss, he is just going to miss it’. “

Mazinho: “It felt like if I was there. I tried to take over his body.”

Rafinha: “You think of where you are going to kick it to and that you can not change it for any reason.”

Neymar: “And for me the last penalty it was a unique moment. I looked at the net and it was too little and the goalkeeper very tall and I couldn’t see anything and my head ‘Where was I going to kick to?’ I look at the mark, take the steps back and I look at the net, it was very big and the goalkeeper very small and I didn’t listen to anything. There I concentrated and I was very calmed..”

Rafinha: “We started to cry like little kids.”

Neymar: “A feeling that transformed into tears..”

Valeria: “It was…That was something very beautiful…”

Robinson: “But, Mazinho, give me a hand here. There has been this families (lists some of the families with football history), but like the Alcantaras there is a saga of more success…”

Mazinho: “God gave us that opportunity to have a family completely into sports.”

Valeria: “It was something that you could see coming, it could only happen this.”

Javier: “They had parents that were sportive, Valeria in volleyball and Mazinho in football, of course.”

Rafa: “We did sports all the time, during free times, at school we had sports...”

Thaisa: “I think that is all about genetics in this family.”

Valeria: “The young people keep growing and a lot of people have the figure of Mazinho, and if they see him they say ‘but look at the kids, and they are doing it all over again’ (referring to the football career)”

Mazinho: “And for me, I’m happy with this.”

Valeria: “I’m not Mazinho’s wife anymore; I’m the mother of Thiago and Rafa.”

Javier: “They have the honor to say, ‘I got two kids and have the same or better quality that I had back in those days’.”

Mazinho: “They ask me if I’m the father of Rafa and Thiago and I say yes…”