Robbo
Paul Walsh
"Peter Cech is still looking for that one now."
He keeps a memento from the time: a framed photo of him beating Zlatan Ibrahimovic in a 50-50. “I think I got that from a supporter, actually,” he laughs. “I stopped to pose for some photos and sign some autographs for the fans, and someone asked me to sign that photo. I said, ‘No, no, no; I’m keeping this! I have to take this home’.”
Leakey = Ledley?Sandro was a top top player and lovely guy
I’ll see if I can find the photos of when we met him
it was the last game of the season and bales last game. He was due to go down for the lap of honour and we were in my corporate box I had for the game... absolutely smashed (set a record for the most money spent)
I went into the corridor to find a very drunk mate staggering along trying to do his trousers up and we turned round and there was SANDRO..
poor bloke didn’t know what hit him as we all ended up out of the box for photos and cuddles basically and they had to put a tannoy announcement out for him to get to the pitch
we also met Leakey on the way down who was as drunk as my mates and I ended up in a chat with his wife about life in Cranfield (near to Bedford). Quality day and quality players
I take it that the bloke on the right was the one struggling with his trousers? Looks proper smashed!
Thanks for posting that. It's brought a real tear to my eye.Yeah, this is why people pay good money to subscribe to The Arfletic. Top quality writing and subject matter. Part 1:
Sandro lets out a sigh. His gaze leaves the screen of his telephone, drifting into the middle distance. He strokes his beard as if it were a magic lamp that could take him back to the afternoon when everything changed.
“Ah, mate,” he says. “Even today, I think about it and get frustrated, honestly.”
Eight years have passed, but there is a good chance you still remember the photo. Sandro is lying on the turf at Loftus Road, receiving attention from Tottenham Hotspur’s medical team. He is looking down at his right knee. He is screaming.
At that precise moment, Sandro could not have known the extent to which that injury — a ruptured anterior cruciate ligament — would shape the remainder of his career. He could not have imagined the domino effect it would trigger in his leg muscles, the psychological aftershocks, or the manner in which it would undermine his vast potential, yanking the arc of his trajectory downward.
Yet twisted into the pain of the days that followed was some kind of grim, existential hunch. Sandro grasped how big this could be, the danger it posed.
“I knew it was serious,” he says. “Even before the doctor saw me, I was worried that it was the cruciate. When he confirmed it, I got really down. It absolutely crushed me.
“I understood that I had been experiencing a really magical moment. I was at the peak of my career, man, the top of the top. Think about it: I was 23; I was already settled in England; I had won the fans over; I knew the league; I felt like a key player at a massive, massive club.
“The hard part was over; the only way was up. Then I got the injury.
“I knew that life had landed a real punch on me. And I knew it could destroy me."
Given the anguish of those memories, it is tempting to frame this as a sob story. Throw in the fact that Sandro today finds himself without a club — he left Brazilian outfit Goias at the start of December — and considering retirement at just 31, and he would surely be forgiven for having a moan.
Yet there is no trace of self-pity. Over the course of an hour-long video call, Sandro appears entirely at peace with his lot in life. He is thoughtful, articulate, chatty. Above all, he seems very, very relaxed.
The bucolic setting probably helps: he is hunkered down at his family farm in Minas Gerais, just a stone’s throw from the house he grew up in. Birds chirp away in the trees; the only brief interruptions come when Sandro’s baby son wakes up and when his mother brings a coffee out to his deckchair. When, later that evening, he sends a voice memo to thank The Athletic for the interview, someone is playing an accordion and singing in the background.
Sandro himself looks ridiculously healthy. Happy, too, particularly when given the opportunity to wax lyrical about the favourite chapter of his career. He may only have spent four seasons at White Hart Lane, but as he recalls the highlights — his relationship with Harry Redknapp, a standout performance against AC Milan at San Siro, the connection he felt with the fans — it quickly becomes clear that Spurs left an indelible mark upon him. And this is before he shows off his Tottenham dartboard (“Signed by Bobby George!”) and the framed Scott Parker jersey that has pride of place on the wall above his barbecue.
“I just loved playing for Tottenham,” he says. “Loved it. The people there… mate, it was sensational. I get goosebumps just talking about it. It was an inexplicable thing. I felt this special feeling inside. You don’t get that at every club, but I did there.
“I just found everything so beautiful. White Hart Lane: I loved that place so much. I would have played for free if they had asked me to.”
It helped that Redknapp took to him from the outset, comparing him, somewhat frivolously, to Brazil great Socrates — “He was really crazy, Harry,” laughs Sandro — and telling him that he would give him time to settle. Sandro didn’t always understand everything his manager said, but he was drawn to his no-nonsense approach.
“I had the impression I was playing for a legend,” he explains. “When he was on the touchline, you could feel his influence on a game. He had this special way about him — this way of talking, of making decisions. Sometimes he would do something that stopped me in my tracks, or made me think, ‘What is this? You can’t do that’.
“If he had to take a player off after 10 minutes of a game, he would, without a second’s thought. Most coaches would wait in that situation, but with Harry it was simple. ‘You were playing badly, so I took you off. Ciao!’. He wasn’t afraid to chop and change when a player wasn’t working in the system. He’d drop one of the senior players and just say, ‘Sorry, son, but I have a lot of good players. You can get angry if you want, but it’s your turn’.
“He did have a tactical side, but it wasn’t his biggest strength. He was a good talker, he knew how to get everything from the squad. I gained so much experience just from being around him, just sharing the changing room with him.”
Sandro quickly fell for English football. He adored the packed stadiums and the slick surfaces. He found his game was suited to the physicality of matches in England: “Every player is as powerful as a tractor, so you always feel you are in a real individual battle. It’s just enchanting.”
Even the style of training impressed him. “I was bowled over by it,” he says. “The intensity is different. You do things in short bursts: bam, bam, bam, bam. It’s hard, but then it’s over. The idea is to coach players, not just tire them out. It’s non-stop. They crack the whip but then it’s done.
“At the start, I thought sessions ended too quickly. I was young and had a lot of energy to burn. I didn’t understand it. I was used to the long training sessions I had in Brazil. I wanted more. But after six months, I saw the light. When I showed up at the game on Saturday afternoon, I wanted the ball so much that I was almost drooling. ‘Give me that ball! I want to play!’
“I have played in a few different countries, but nowhere is the same as England. It was perfect.”
Sandro showed flashes of his talent in the early months of his Tottenham career. But true affirmation came in February 2011, when Redknapp’s side visited AC Milan in the Champions League. Another young player may have felt overawed by the prospect of facing Gennaro Gattuso and Clarence Seedorf in midfield. Sandro, whose big-game senses had already been sharpened by a successful Copa Libertadores campaign with Internacional, attacked the game with gusto.
“That was exactly what I needed,” Sandro recalls of his European debut. “I was just waiting for a massive game. I always relished big, decisive matches. I wanted to show people who Sandro was. I was a back-up player at that time. I needed a performance that said, ‘I’ve arrived. I’m here. You can count on me’.
“That game at San Siro was a line in the sand for my career. Everyone said, ‘What on earth was that?'”
He keeps a memento from the time: a framed photo of him beating Zlatan Ibrahimovic in a 50-50. “I think I got that from a supporter, actually,” he laughs. “I stopped to pose for some photos and sign some autographs for the fans, and someone asked me to sign that photo. I said, ‘No, no, no; I’m keeping this! I have to take this home’.”
The next two years passed in a sugary blur. Sandro cemented his place in the Tottenham midfield, then worked his way into the Brazil squad. There were rumours of interest from Europe’s top clubs, including Real Madrid, and a lucrative offer from Emirates Marketing Project. Yet Sandro felt confident that he was already in the right place. It felt like everything was clicking.
“People told me I would earn so much more at City,” he says. “But I felt that I would be betraying the Tottenham fans. I thought, ‘Why would I move to another team now? Sorry, guys, but I’m not going’.
“I loved it at Spurs. I was a starter in the team and playing well. The Premier League was already starting to seem easy. I just wanted to keep developing. It felt like my time had arrived.”
It had. Then his right knee buckled under him against Queens Park Rangers. He didn’t play again for seven months, all that momentum gone like petals in the wind. Sandro is an ebullient man, but even he was plunged into darkness.
“I remember speaking to my mum in the days after it happened,” he says. “I told her I didn’t understand. I would ask myself, ‘Why me? Why me?’
“I sometimes watch the interviews I gave during that time. I look at myself and think, ‘You’re depressed, mate’. It was a real mixture of anger and sadness.
YepI take it that the bloke on the right was the one struggling with his trousers? Looks proper smashed!