“I drink because it is not easy to be a commitment that remains in debt”

Adriano Leite (42), former Brazilian international who lived his best years as a footballer in Inter Milan In the decade of the year 2000, he fell into a very deep pit where alcohol ended up ruining a life, himself, which in his own words was not perfect. “I was obsessed with wasting my life,” he told ‘The Players Tribune’.

Former footballer for Flamengo, Fiorentina, Parma, San Pablo, Roma and Corinthians, among others, Adriano talks about the sadness that accompanies his professional life, the traumas of his family and the need to always return to dangerous favela of his childhood. He did this on the eve of the launch of his biography ‘Meu Medo Maior’ (‘My greatest fear’).

“Being a promise is a broken promise. The biggest waste in football: me. I like that word, alas. Not only because of how it sounds, but because I’m obsessed with wasting my life. Enjoy me in this stigma. I don’t drink drugs, like They try to prove it that I don’t like crime, but, of course, I can do it, I don’t like to go to clubs, I always go to the same place in my neighborhood. Naná’s kiosk,” he said.

He explains how he got hooked on alcohol as a child: “I was 14 years old and in our community we were all partying. There are a lot of people, samba, people coming and going. At that time, I wasn’t a But when I saw all the kids doing his thing, laughing, I said a plastic cup and put the bitter, fine foam down my throat for the first time. A new world of ‘fun’ opened up to me “My mother was at the party and she saw the scene. He remained silent.”

And his father? His father did not allow it. “Stop right now!” he shouted at me. “My aunts and my mother tried to calm things down before the situation got worse. ‘Come on, Mirinho, he’s with his friends, he’s not going to do anything crazy. He’s just there laughing, having fun, leave him alone, Adriano is growing up,'” my mother said. But there was no talk. The old man went crazy. He snatched the cup from my hand and threw it into the drain. ‘I didn’t teach you that, son,’ he said. who reveals that his paternal grandfather died of alcoholism.

His father’s death marked him forever.

His father, four years ago, was shot in the head. “It was at a party in Cruzeiro. A stray bullet entered his forehead and hit the back of his head. The doctors had no way to remove it. After that, my family’s life was never the same, the my father started having seizures. Have you ever seen someone with an epileptic seizure. “That changed my life forever. It’s a problem I still haven’t solved.”

His arrival in European football did not improve him emotionally. “I felt like shit.” For Christmas, she went to Clarence Seedorf’s house and called her mother on the phone: “‘My daughter! I miss you. Merry Christmas. Everything is here, all that’s missing is you,’ she replied. I immediately started crying. “I was devastated. I grabbed a bottle of vodka. I cried out all night because that didn’t stop me from being sad,” he lamented.

An escape and constant return

Neither Roberto Mancini nor José Mourinho nor the president Massimo Moratti were able to put it on the right track. He escaped his neighborhood for only a few days: “I couldn’t do what they asked me to do. I stayed well for a few weeks, I abstained from alcohol, I trained like a horse, but there was always a relapse. All over again Criticized he told me, I couldn’t handle a lot of stupid things, mostly “I did. I did it because I wasn’t feeling well. I need my space to do what I want to do.”

Now, with wine, nothing seems to have changed. “I drink every other day, yes. And the other days too. How did someone like me get to the point almost every day? I don’t like to give explanations to others, but here’s one: I drink because it’s not easy to be a promise that remains in debt”.

Finally, he referred to Villa Cruzeiro, his favela: “It’s a very dangerous place. Life is hard. People are suffering. If I stop to count all the people I know who have died violently , we are here talking for days and days.. Here I walk barefoot and shirtless, I just sit on the sidewalk, I remember the stories of my youth, I listen to music, I dance I’m with my friends and I’m sleeping on the floor.” “What else do I want? I don’t even bring girls here, let alone mess with the girls from my community, because I just want to be peaceful and remember my essence. That’s why I keep coming back here. They respect that I’m here.”