So… listen to this… Everyone knows Pelé, Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Neymar… you get the point… But there is one name that’s known all across Brazil that barely anyone can recognize anywhere else in the world… I’m talking about Dener… And at one point or another, his name was mentioned alongside every single one of those players… Even Pelé’s very own son said that Dener had the speed and skill of Neymar, the trickery and spirit of Ronaldinho and the efficiency of Ronaldo… We’re talking about a player who impressed Maradona so much that he had to stop mid match and applaud him… There’s a reason he was known as the “The God of dribbling”. . .
However, as you might have guessed by now… Dener passed away at 23… Only days after his move to Europe had been finalized and precisely two months before the 1994 world cup started… Ronaldo was the last name on that squad list, he didn’t play a single minute in the tournament and still it was enough to change his career forever… Most believe that if Dener had been there, his fate would have been similar to Ronaldo’s or any of those other players I’ve mentioned… But in the middle of all my research, there was one moment that truly touched my heart… I heard someone claim that to this day people are still naming their kids in his honor… So I looked up his name in a football database and there it was, up till the day he debuted for the national team there were no other players with that name, but after that date, there were dozens, with the vast majority having been born in the years following his death… That’s how much Dener meant to the people of Brazil, those who saw him never forgot what he was like, watching him play felt like catching a glimpse of a shooting star… And the first glimpse of his talent came in 1986… having lost his father, 15 year old Dener had quit football so he could help his mom with the bills… However that year, a huge youth futsal tournament took place in his hometown… I’m talking… live broadcast on TV and 7 thousand people in the stands for the final… there are champions league clubs averaging a lower attendance than that… right now… So to the schools taking part in it, this was serious business, which was why they sent out scouts to roam the streets looking for poor kids willing to play for a few bucks and ended up offering Dener a “scholarship”. . .
except that well… Dener never showed up for a class, they were just paying him to play futsal… What they weren’t expecting was that Dener was well aware of how good he was… so he sort of just began extorting them, refusing to show up for the matches if they didn’t pay him more and more… And by the time he got to that final, he was making more money from futsal than he could ever make at a regular job… However soon that would mean nothing, as Dener would take every trophy and award at the tournament, catching the eye of the likes of São Paulo and Portuguesa, his childhood club… eventually signing for the latter… But once there, they quickly realized there was a serious problem with him … Dener was a real street kid… most days he didn’t even show up at home, his family would literally watch every single one of his matches, as it was the only way they could make sure he was still okay… Even though most described Dener as a really funny, laid back guy, his childhood friends were into some really heavy stuff and their behavior rubbed off on him… It wasn’t rare to find stories of Dener stealing football boots or getting seriously aggressive during football matches… And at one point, things actually got much more serious than that, with the police arriving midway through a training session and taking Dener into custody, accusing him of armed robbery along with 5 of his so-called friends… Only being released after two days and only because the club convinced the court that they would watch over him… However, like many other players he would perceive this as impunity rather than a second chance at life and things would eventually get very serious once again… Still, soon after he was getting his debut for the club… impressing two time silver boot winner Alfinete so much, that he asked for his shirt at the end of the match, only for Dener to tell him: “It’s my debut and you’re already asking me for my shirt, these things cost like 500 bucks”. . .
Regardless, 2 years later, no matter how good he was, Portuguesa were kind of broke, they wouldn’t even fully promote him to the first team despite the fact that he had already been playing with them for 2 seasons… But since Dener didn’t wanna leave his childhood club, he orchestrated a fake transfer to Belgium, taking his bluff as far as driving to the airport as if he was about to leave, leading the president to fold and hand him the contract… So yeah, even if morally questionable, it was kind of genius… and it paid off massively for Portuguesa… Because soon after that contract was signed, in a Paulist championship match, Dener took off from deep, dribbled past half the team and scored what is to this day considered the greatest goal in the history of the club… However, right after it happened, one of his teammates looked at him and asked “what in the world have you just done? ”. .
. and Dener simply replied: “Stop acting dumb, I score goals like this every training session”. .
. And after proving that right, with plenty more iconic performances, the national team came calling… On his debut, Dener was so excited to come in, that he ended up running into the pitch before the other player had come out… being forced by the referee to repeat the whole process… but even those shenanigans weren’t enough to throw him off his game… Despite only getting 6 minutes on the pitch, he stepped into it, dropped deep and started the counter attack that allowed Brazil to tie the match… It was a seriously promising start, but soon after Dener missed one of the biggest matches of the season after injuring himself trying to do wheelies on his motorcycle and the media began hounding him… which only became worse once Brazil’s under 23’s missed out on qualification to the olympic games, with Dener being blamed for their failure… Dener was being seen as the frontman in a team that included the likes of Cafu and Roberto Carlos, as unfair as his treatment was, it was also a testament to his greatness… Still, don’t get me wrong, the media did, to an extent, sort of have a point… as his own aunt once said: “he thought that if he had a game the next day, getting 3 hours of sleep was more than enough”. .
. But the thing is that, for Dener, it really seemed that was enough… There was this one time when no one could find him the day before a match against Santos… Everyone was worried, the manager was already setting up a new gameplan to make up for his absence and then a couple hours before the match he showed up like nothing had happened… He went into the match and it was like he wasn’t even there… by halftime they were losing 2 nil and as one of his teammates said “I was sure that was it, we were gonna get trashed 8 nil by Santos”. .
. However, in the locker room, the manager went crazy on Dener, blaming him for everything and eventually telling him he was gonna be subbed off…. But at that moment Dener looked him in the eye and told him “I’m not coming off, I’m gonna go into that pitch and I am the one who says when that match is over”.
. . Once he finished that sentence, the whole locker room went silent, they could feel something was about to happen… about half an hour later, Dener had led Portuguesa to come back 3 to 2, but it wasn’t enough… Then he got the ball, put it between the first defender’s legs, beat the second one on the sprint and slotted it in after dribbling the keeper… It was a masterpiece, by the time the final whistle was heard, he turned to his teammates and told them “I said what I said, I am Dener.
Everyone here must understand this, I am Dener”. . .
In other words, he wanted them to know that he was him. . .
Regardless, not even these kinds of performances were enough to draw the attention away from his bad boy persona… Over the next year, he arrived at training in a car covered in bullet holes, then he was caught hiding a blade in his sock as he was supposedly planning on stabbing one of his teammates… As one newspaper called him, he was “a brilliant vagabond”. . .
he had become one of the most infamous players in the country and unfortunately this cost him his place on the national team even though he had the likes of 2 time world cup winner Pepe, claiming that “he deserves more chances, in terms of raw talent, no player ever got this close to Pelé”. . .
At this point, it was more clear than ever, Dener needed to get his act together and the first step towards that was getting away from his hometown and getting away from his old friends… So he talked to Grémio, who had been dreaming about signing for years but simply couldn’t afford him, and worked out a deal for a 3 month loan… It all went incredibly well, they even won the Gaucho Championship, but Dener’s stock rose even further and by the time he got back to Portuguesa, they too had fallen into the same predicament… his contract was nearing its end and they just couldn’t afford him… as the president would say “It was getting to a point where he almost earned more by himself than everyone of his teammates put together… We were getting so desperate that at one point, half joking, half serious, I proposed signing away the stadium to his name… He would be the owner of all of this… We realized it was impossible to keep him here much longer”. . .
And it was at this point that Dener made a silly little suggestion that changed the route of his life… Dener said he would agree to renew his contract as long as the club could get him a Mitsubishi Eclipse as a sign on bonus… It might seem like a small request now, but at the time, it was extremely hard to import cars into Brazil due to some really strict laws, so getting one was like finding a needle in a haystack… By the time Dener got the car, it was one of only a handful in the country… Everywhere he took his spaceship, as he liked to call it, people saw the all white paint job with Dener 10 on the license plate and knew who it was… little did they know he had just signed his death sentence… However, while all of this happened in São Paulo, it was something else that was happening in Rio De Janeiro that sealed his destiny… Back in 1989, a man named Eurico Miranda became the brazilian national team’s director of football, leading them to win the Copa America after a 40 year drought… However, one year later, he had already left… The problem was simple, he was also the vice president of Vasco Da Gama and he refused to let go of that position. Simultaneously, Jair Pereira, a manager who had led Brazil to two under 20 world cups, was sacked from Atletico after getting into a bit of an upset with the president… and it was right here that Eurico Miranda approached him, trying to sign him, asking him: “Jair, do you wanna be champions with me? ” and Jair replied: “Yeah, I’ll make you a champion.
I only have one demand… Dener”. . .
At this moment, Eurico’s eyes widened… he was flabbergasted. Signing Dener was gonna be his first suggestion… and as you might imagine, for Dener who was desperate to right his wrongs and secure a place in the 1994 world cup, joining them at Vasco was the perfect move… He was getting the exposure provided by joining one of the biggest teams in Brazil, while managing to get away from his hometown and clean up his image, while also catering to the wishes of two men who had great power over the national team… For once, he was making the right move… Or at least that’s what everyone thought… On the first day of training, Dener was so excited that when Jair asked the players to start the session by running around the pitch, he darted way with such speed that once he reached the corner flag, he slipped, fell, hit his head on the ground and passed out to the great amusement of everyone of his new teammates… Regardless, this over excitement translated well onto the pitch… How well, you ask… Let’s just say thar his debut against Newell’s Old Boys is arguably the most iconic match of his entire career… That day, the focus should’ve been on Maradona, it was his first game back after being out injured for a few months… However, Dener had another plan… 6 minutes in, Dener took the ball and made it past 1,2,3,4,5 players… only barely missing out on the goal… That early into the match Maradona was already shaking his head in disbelief… And Dener pretty much didn’t stop until he was subbed off… He was so incredible that the next day, even the argentine newspapers had Dener on the cover… But nothing was more shocking than when Maradona surprised the entire Vasco squad, by barging into their locker room asking for “the kid”. .
. Maradona wanted to shake his hand… I don’t think there is a bigger seal of approval than that… The moment Diego left, Dener just kept rubbing it on his friend’s faces: “did Maradona ever ask to meet you? Didn’t think so”.
. . Even 3 years later when his teammate, Ricardo Rocha ended up joining Newell’s, the people still talked about that young boy who showed Maradona how it’s done… It was especially ironic that a goalless match would end up being his most iconic….
I mean Dener was literally famous for saying that “Sometimes the dribble is more beautiful than the goal”. . .
Regardless, over the next few months at Vasco, Dener was on some of his greatest form ever, so much so that, by the end, the fans had begun chanting “It’s cafuné, it’s cafuné, Dener is a mix of Garrincha and Pelé”. . .
However, what no one realized back then was that over that period, Dener was experiencing one of the lowest moments of his life… Despite the fact he had three kids and financially provided for their mother almost as if she was his wife, Dener never actually got married to her and was completely open about the fact he was dating other women… And only one month after arriving at Vasco, his girlfriend, at the time, passed away after being run over by a car during the Carnival… Still, no matter what his mental state was at the time, only 2 months later, his performances had earned him his first move to europe… At the end of the season, Dener would join Stuttgart for a sum of 3 million dollars… but unfortunately, that move would never take place… Only 3 days after signing that contract, and 16 days after his 23rd birthday, Dener, who had gone back to São Paulo for the negotiations, decided, at around midnight, that he had to go back to Rio immediately. Despite the fact he already had a plane ticket for the next morning, he refused to leave his famous Mitsubishi Eclipse in São Paulo… So… Tired and with a 5 hour trip ahead of him, no matter how much his family kept insisting that he should stay the night, it didn’t matter… 3 months earlier Dener had met a man named Otto Miranda, a convicted arms dealer, alleged drug dealer and personal friend of both Romário and Edmundo… Once again, Dener picked his friendships poorly and invited Otto to come with him to São Paulo… That day, no matter what Dener’s family said, Otto repeatedly insisted that they could take turns sleeping while the other drove the car and so it was… Before leaving, Dener picked up his phone and called one of his best friends, Edinho, a goalkeeper at Santos and even more notably Pelé’s son… The two had met around 7 years earlier in a youth match… Dener scored past Edinho, the two struck conversation, ended up going out for pizza and quickly became extremely close… However, that day, when Dener called he seemed strange, he kept telling Edinho how much he loved him… Edinho insists to this day that Dener had to know what was about to happen… Regardless, at 5 a. m.
