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Some fans of Fluminense You may not remember it, but Marinho, star of the Saints, this Sunday’s rival for the 18th round of Brasileirão, was revealed by the Rio de Janeiro club. Twelve years separate the brief passage of the attacker through the base categories and the Tricolor professional from the current great moment of the attacker, one of the highlights of the competition. And despite showing potential early in his career, his numbers were much more modest than they are today. He played eight games with the Flu jersey in 2008, the year he turned 18, and failed to win and score goals.
+ Fluminense x Santos: see where to look, lineups, absences and refereeing
Marinho passing through Fluminense at the beginning of his career – Photo: Photocamera
Marinho does not usually give luck in the confrontations against Fluminense either. There were five games (one for Cruzeiro, two for Vitória, one for Grêmio and one for Santos), no victory, three draws, two defeats and a single goal. The last game was for Brasileirão last year, in a 1-1 draw, in which the forward ended up being sent off in the last minutes for a hard foul on João Pedro.
Marinho in Fluminense x Santos for the Brasileirão 2019 – Photo: Ivan Storti / Santos
Early promotion to professionals
Born in Penedo, Alagoas, in 1990, Marinho was discovered by Fluminense technical observers in 2007, in a grassroots tournament when he was playing for Corinthians-AL. He arrived in Xerém for the last year of the U-17 and soon attracted attention. The executive director of the club’s base at the time and currently head of exploration for Quakes in the United States, Bruno Costa recalls:
– He excelled in a tournament in the Northeast. At that time we were already looking at him and arranged for him to come to the base of the Fluminense. He went through an evaluation period and signed a contract. We took him to a tournament in Santiago and he did very well. He was a very nice boy, a great person, very loved by the group. Still young, he was called by Renato Gaúcho for the professional – said Bruno Costa.
Currently, he is in charge of the tricolor base Antônio García, who worked as administrative supervisor in Xerém and also closely followed the striker:
– Already attracted attention. He was a very fast athlete, good one on one. He stood out more playing open on the sides of the field, but he was also second forward and was also able to play more inside. Difficult to have the dimension (which would become today’s player). It had quality. And it was a generation of many exponents, Maicon Bolt, Dalton, Rafael, the twins … – said Antônio García.
Marinho for Fluminense in 2008 – Photo: Playback
In 2008, Marinho rose to the U-20 and, as a promise, he began to have chances in the professional that same year. The opportunity came early because coach Renato Gaúcho asked some athletes from the base to compose the main squad, in order to give priority to the dispute of the Libertadores da América that year.
The debut came in March, in a classic against Botafogo, for the Carioca Championship. Marinho, still a 17-year-old boy, started on the bench and started at 30 in the 2nd half instead of David. Alvinegrou won the classic 3-1.
Marinho had more opportunities in the first team at the start of Brasileirão that year, in a sequence of games that coincided with the final stages of the continental competition. There were six games in that period, five of them entered the course of the game and only one started as a starter. And the bad campaign of the tricolor subsidiary did not give good numbers at the beginning of Marinho’s career: four defeats, two draws and no goals. The forward also returned to play for Flu, in a defeat at Palmeiras on matchday 12.
The divergence between the management and the employer culminated in non-renewal
Marinho’s contract with Flu ended at the end of that year. And disagreements between the tricolor board and the athlete’s coach, former player Bismarck, stalled renewal talks. And because of the mess, the forward was dismissed from the main group and returned to the U-20 by decision of the football coordinator of that period, the former player Branco:
– Fluminense is not the home-of-mother-joana. The player’s contract ends in December and we contacted the player’s representative, Bismarck, two weeks ago, but he is not responding to our calls and continues to offer the player across Europe. Is Fluminense a showcase? Yes, but it can’t be used that way. The club is open for business, football is like that, but it is not a disaster. Marinho is a great player, he has a future, but he has to put his head in the right place. If you want to stay here, you will stay. But we have already revealed several players and will continue to do so – said Branco, in a statement issued in July 2008.
The forward left Flu at the end of the contract and signed for five years with Internacional. Marinho also passed through Caxias, Paraná, Goiás, Ituano and Náutico before exploding in Ceará, already in 2015, at the age of 25. He was hired by Cruzeiro, but he did not stand out and came out to shine in 2016 at Vitória, when he scored 21 goals in 46 games. The forward also had a brief stint in China before returning to Brazil to play for Grêmio and then Santos.