Inspirational stories about football stars, hard training

David Beckham practises free-kick accuracy with tyres hanging on the goal.

Unlike other Brazilian stars, Kaka was not born in the slums. In 1982, in São Paulo, Brazil's largest city, an engineer and a female teacher welcomed their first child, Ricardo Izáxan-Santos Leit. The boy may have been destined to be a footballer from birth, and like Pele, his full name has almost been forgotten, and the fans only remember the now famous "Kaka".

In Brazil, the atmosphere of football pervades every corner, which has made Kaka hooked on playing football from a young age. Kaka, who came from a well-to-do family, did not play street football and rampage through the lanes like most children. From the very beginning, he received formal training at a professional football school.

Football-obsessed children are ubiquitous in Brazil, so his parents never dreamed that their son would become a star until Kaka received his first professional contract.

Kaka's football path is very smooth. In 2000 he was selected for the Brazilian youth team. In the same year, at the age of 18, he signed his first professional contract with the famous Brazilian club Sao Paulo.

During his three years at São Paulo, Kaka experienced the joy of becoming famous at a young age, and was once accused by fans of "having a soft style of play and looking like a woman on the football field" when the team's results were not good. Indeed, unlike the samba style that is characteristic of Brazilian football, it is difficult to see Kaka on the pitch showing off his footwork. But that doesn't mean Kaka doesn't have great individual skills, only that he's an outlier in the Brazilian football team, which values individual performances.

Although born in Brazil, he has the basic characteristics of a European player, a quality that can improve the attacking speed of the entire team, and it quickly caught the attention of the Brazilian national team. On January 31, 2002, during Brazil's match against Bolivia, Kaka, who was not yet 20 years old, wore the yellow jersey of the Brazilian national team for the first time. In the subsequent World Cup in South Korea and Japan, Kaka got the opportunity to represent Brazil in the world's highest football event.

Although Kaka only got a brief chance to play in the World Cup in South Korea and Japan, he was lucky to be part of the Brazilian team that won the "Hercules Cup" for the fifth time. Such a life experience reminds us of the 1994 World Cup in the United States, when Ronaldo reached the top of world football with the Brazilian team before the age of 18.

Kaka, who has not experienced street football, has a very different trajectory from the success of Ronaldo and Ronaldinho. Compared with Da Luo and Xiao Luo's initial stumble in the Netherlands and France, Kaka's first stop in Europe was the century-old giants AC Milan. He earned the trust of the fans with two crucial passes on his debut; And his first goal came in the Milan derby, which Milanese value the most.

Without God's providence, who would have believed that a newcomer to Brazil would become the main force of a century-old dynasty with little need for any adaptation?