Alexandre Rodrigues da Silva was born on the 2nd of September 1989 in the city of Pato Branco, Brazil and is more commonly known as Alexandre Pato or just Pato. Pato began his career as a youth player for Internacional in 2000 and having risen through the youth ranks there, he burst onto the scene aged 17 by scoring on his Brazilian championship debut at Palmeiras in November 2006. It was the start of a trend as Pato also scored on his debuts for AC Milan, Chelsea, Corinthians and Brazil. A month later, he broke Pele's long-standing record as the youngest ever scorer in a FIFA-organised competition by netting against Al Ahly in the Club World Cup, a competition Internacional won. Then, in a game ro mark the 50th anniversary of the 1958 World Cup final between Brazil and Sweden, he was announced himself to the rest of the world with an audacious lob from what seemed an impossible angle. After Brazil's 1-0 win at the Emirates Stadium that night, Brazil manager Dunga, a man who rarely gets carried away with anything, said: 'His style of play is similar to that of Ronaldo. I don't think he is a normal talent.' Pele. Ronaldo. 'The new Kaka' at Milan, it seemed no comparison was too lofty for Pato, just the latest Brazilian wonderkid poised to take the world by storm.
Having scored 12 goals in 27 appearances and helping Internacional to win the 2006 FIFA Club World Cup, in August 2007 he signed for Italian side AC Milan and started his Milan career brilliantly with nine goals in 20 appearances during his debut campaign. The following year, he was the club's leading scorer with 18. In 2009, he scored 18 goals in 42 matches in all competitions, which earned him both the Golden Boy and Serie A 'Young Footballer of the Year' awards. A quick, agile, and creative forward with excellent technical ability and an eye for goal, he was considered to be one of the world's most promising young footballing stars and had three very good years at the San Siro, but towards the end of the 2009-10 campaign came the first injury issues that would send his career into a tailspin. During the 2010-11 season he helped Milan win the Serie A and was the club's joint top scorer with 14 goals in 25 games but his hamstring was giving him the most problems, going three times within the space of a year. Then issues with other thigh muscles saw him restricted to just 25 appearances in his final two seasons with Milan and also cost him a place in the Brazil squad for the 2010 World Cup. In January 2013 he returned to Brazil, signing for €15 million with Corinthians, where he won the Campeonato Paulista. However within a year, he had been branded one of the worst signings Corinthians had ever made. His sluggish performances were blamed initially on the pressure of his high transfer fee but eventually they were put down to a general lack of effort and a dressing room rift caused by the fact that he earned significantly more than his team-mates.
In 2014 he joined São Paulo on a two-year loan deal, where he played 95 games, scoring 38 goals for the club. In January 2016 he transferred to Chelsea in England on a loan deal, but despite Chelsea paying the entirety of his £30,000-a-week wages, there seemed little urgency to get him involved. In the end, Pato played just twice for the London club and his time there is very easily forgotten before he left for Spanish side Villarreal that same year. Then in 2017 he signed for Chinese club Tianjin Tianhai before returning to São Paulo in 2019. Being a full international for Brazil since 2008, Pato was part of their squads which won the 2009 FIFA Confederations Cup and competed at the 2011 Copa America. He also won two consecutive Olympic medals for the country, a bronze in 2008, and silver four years later.
Pato has reflected on what might have been. "The first thing you have to understand is that I left home very early. Maybe too early. When you are 11, you're not ready for the world. You go out there chasing this dream, but you're alone, and it's very easy to get lost on the way. As a footballer, I was ready for the world. As a person, I was nowhere close. I cried a lot. I hid in my room. I couldn’t tell my mom, because I knew she'd turn up the next day to take me home. So I just told her, 'Ohhh, things are grrrrreeeat'! The football? That was just fun. I went from the under-15s to the first team in no time. At 17, I was going to the Club World Cup, scoring in the semifinal and playing Barcelona in the final. That’s when I met Ronaldinho."
see also :- http://www.thefootballvoice.com/2024/04/footballs-nearly-men-david-bentley.html
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