Often he would stare in silence as the road signs flashed past him left and right. Or he scrolled through his phone disinterestedly as they waited at a traffic light. In the car, Mauro Júnior (22) did not talk when he had another match on the bench at PSV.
‘I regularly cursed him after a match,’ says Ruud Sanders. With subtle questions, the former foster father of the Brazilian footballer tried to break the icy silence between Eindhoven and Nuenen, but there was no response. “If he wasn’t allowed to play football, he was grumpy.”
As a substitute, Mauro Júnior walked around PSV for a long time with a depressed heart. But giving up was not an option. Anyway, he wanted to fulfill his dream: succeed at the club that had given him the chance to play football in Europe since he was 14.
This season, the stocky Brazilian (1.71 meters) is experiencing his final breakthrough at PSV. On Sunday he will play in the cup final against Ajax for his first main prize as a basic player. Not as the creative midfielder he was when PSV first brought him to the Netherlands, but as a modern full-back. Trainer Roger Schmidt has already praised the versatility of the multifunctional player and his lion heart several times.
Rented to Heracles
The road that Mauro had to travel to get to the kick-off in De Kuip was long and special. Via a football boarding school in Brazil and several internships at PSV to circumvent the Fifa regulations, he ended up in the Nuenen host family with Ruud and Ans Sanders, near Eindhoven. In between, he played football for another year at Heracles on a rental basis.
Mauro Jaqueson Júnior Ferreira dos Santos, as his full name is, grew up in the village of Palmital, in the interior of Brazil, about a four hour drive from São Paulo. Together with his younger brother and sister, he was raised by his mother and grandparents, after his father disappeared from the picture at a young age. Even then, the desire to take care of his family later swelled.
Football was the way to do that. He left home when he was 12 to live in the boarding school of Desportivo Brasil, a club known in Brazil for picking up talented football players. He trained there five times a week under a strict regime. He was allowed to go home on the weekend. Like many other Brazilian talents, Mauro Júnior hoped one day to make the crossing to Europe.
“Mauro was an atypical Brazilian footballer,” said Richard Mettes, the Dutch agent and owner of the company Total Football Agency. During a youth tournament, his eye fell on the player who, in addition to his fine technique, distinguished himself with his unbridled commitment and the discipline with which he played. ‘He played much more the way football is played in Europe.’
European clubs recognized his style of play, but FIFA rules prohibit signing 14-year-old talents. Since 2001, the World Football Association has not allowed the transfer of footballers under the age of 18 from outside the European Union. This should protect young players and prevent the trade in talented footballers. Within Europe, footballers are allowed to transfer to another European club from the age of 16.
PSV trick
To ensure that Mauro Júnior would choose PSV at the age of 18, the club devised a ruse. From the age of 14, PSV had the talent come to Eindhoven for several weeks, spread over two periods, to train and play tournaments and practice matches with peers such as Cody Gakpo, Jordan Teze and Armando Obispo. “That way he got a feel for PSV and he was able to get used to the Dutch football culture,” says Mettes, who has been Mauro Júnior’s agent for nine years.
When the Brazilian youth international was in the Netherlands for a few weeks in those years, PSV housed him with Ruud and Ans Sanders in Nuenen, where he had previously stayed when he participated with his club Desportivo Brasil in an international youth tournament in the Brabant village. “It is difficult for PSV to compete against the richer clubs from Europe, so the club is looking at how it can be attractive to players in a different way,” says Mettes. ‘Mauro did an internship at Liverpool when he was 16, but already had a good feeling at PSV.’
With the construction to allow Mauro Júnior to come to the Netherlands for weeks, PSV consciously looked for loopholes, says Stijn Boeykens. According to the lawyer of the Association of Contract Players (VVCS), Fifa has devised the rules to protect youth players. “Strictly speaking, PSV did not break the rules, because they knew that they could not transfer Mauro Junior before he was eighteen, but because of this it is acting contrary to the intention of the regulations.”
PSV’s ruse is a variation on a trick that many wealthy European clubs have used: arranging a job for the father of a talent, so that he could legally come to Europe. For example, Barcelona managed to lure Lionel Messi to Spain at the age of 13 from Rosario in Argentina. Feyenoord brought 12-year-old Leonardo to Rotterdam in the 1990s and placed the Brazilian in a host family. At the time, there was no transfer ban for players under the age of 18.
Fifa now monitors its own rules more closely, Boeykens knows. Where previously the national associations were responsible for the control, now an international FIFA commission checks whether there is any abuse. ‘National federations sometimes want to turn a blind eye, but the committee doesn’t. For example, she checks whether there cannot be a reason other than the work of one of the parents. If the father suddenly starts doing very different work than he did, it is noticeable’, says Boeykens.
He himself is ‘not in favor of loopholes’. According to the lawyer, PSV’s conduct is in a gray zone. ‘As a result, mala fide figures within football still see and get opportunities to peddle with young players. PSV may present itself as a decent club, but as far as I’m concerned it is looking for the limits of what is permissible. Nobody knows how many ‘failed’ Mauro Júniors have already passed at De Herdgang.’ PSV did not want to respond to the criticism.
Five-year contract
More than a month after his 18th birthday, Mauro Júnior signed a five-year contract with PSV in 2017. In a quiet residential area in Nuenen, the Sanders family cleared the attic for the Brazilian talent who would stay with the host family for almost a year before moving into his own apartment. ‘We already knew Mauro from his earlier periods in the Netherlands and thought it was good for the development of our three children that they came into contact with other cultures’, says Ruud, who works as an IT specialist in daily life.
The family had often had Brazilian footballers in their house, but soon noticed that Mauro Júnior was different from his compatriots. ‘The discipline was there from an early age’, says Ans. “If we had to take him to practice at half past eight, he would be ready on the couch in his training clothes by eight.”
Together with the sons Sil and Jonas, he spent a lot of time behind the playstation. And if his schedule allowed it, he went with the brothers to the pub in Eindhoven. Although father Ruud praises Mauro’s discipline, he was never completely reassured when the footballer went among the Eindhoven nightlife crowd. ‘Unlike my sons, who often stayed a little longer, I always picked up Mauro at night. I felt responsible towards PSV.’
At PSV, Mauro Júnior, after an interim rental period to Heracles, skipped for years between a place on the field and the bench. Until Schmidt told him when he arrived almost two years ago that he should focus on the back position rather than the midfield. When Philipp Max dropped out before the winter break, he seized his chance with both hands and did not disappear from the team.
In the summer, Mauro Júnior will be in the Netherlands for five years and he wants to apply for the Dutch passport. One day he hopes for an invitation from the Brazilian national selection, otherwise the Dutch national team is also an option in the future. But more importantly: a Dutch passport opens doors within the European Union. In some European competitions, a club may have a maximum number of players from outside the EU in the selection. Mettes: ‘Mauro has a lot of talent and wants to get the most out of his career.’
In Nuenen they are eagerly looking forward to the cup final against Ajax. Mother Ans still has regular contact with her former foster child. “We still kind of see him as one of us,” she says. ‘The fact that he can play a final with PSV on Sunday means a lot to him. He has worked hard for this all these years.’