Morethangoals

Banco da Vitória sits by a river outside Ilhéus, Bahia. Aldair Nascimento dos Santos grew up there playing barefoot, got his first boots at ten and his first ball at twelve. Other kids on that pitch were as good as he was, he says; the difference was a father who took him to Rio de Janeiro. Flamengo signed him after one trial.

Benfica took him to Europe in 1989 and to the European Cup final against Milan. After the 1990 World Cup, where he was in Brazil’s squad, Roma signed him. Italian man-marking was new to him, and it was coach Ottavio Bianchi who backed him through the first winter: as long as I am here, you stay and you play. He stayed thirteen seasons and repaid that faith many times over.

In 1994 his call came late. Carlos Alberto Parreira had left him out of the original 22, and Aldair joined the squad when Carlos Mozer was ruled out. Before he flew, Roma president Franco Sensi slipped a sealed envelope into his bag a new contract, to be opened on his return. Aldair refused to open it: whatever was inside, they would negotiate when he came back.

He came off the bench in the opener when Ricardo Rocha tore a muscle, then started every match alongside Márcio Santos. Brazil conceded three goals in seven games and won their fourth title after 24 years. He spent days in Recife, Bahia and Rio without sleep, then returned to Rome, where the city he had just beaten congratulated him. And handed him a better contract than the one in the envelope.

The Romanisti called him Pluto and gave him his own chant. In 1998 he handed the captain’s armband to Francesco Totti his own choice, the Brazilian way: the armband goes to the player who carries the club. That summer he reached a third World Cup final with Brazil, and finished his international career with 81 caps, two Copa América titles and Olympic bronze. He won the 2001 scudetto, and when Roma retired his number 6, it was Aldair who asked them to put it back on the pitch a shirt that great belongs on the field. His life is now a film, “Aldair Cuore giallorosso,” in Italian cinemas since May.

> MORE THAN GOALS

At 17, Lamine Yamal has already lived a life that most footballers spend a career chasing. A European Championship, Barcelona’s number 10 shirt, global sponsorships and the expectations of an entire generation. Football has become comfortable asking young players to become adults.

The money arrives early. So does the pressure. Before many of them have finished school, they’re expected to lead teams, represent countries and carry the weight of millions of opinions. Somewhere along the way, the child risks disappearing behind the footballer.

Then the cameras found Keyne.

After Spain’s recent victory, one of the evening’s most memorable moments wasn’t a goal. It was Lamine’s younger brother Keyne celebrating from the stands, his face filled with uncomplicated pride. It revealed something statistics never could.

Lamine has often spoken about Keyne in those same simple terms. “He’s everything to me,” he once said. Asked what motivates him, he didn’t begin with trophies. He spoke about making his little brother happy and giving his mother the life she had worked so hard to provide.

Raised between two households after his parents separated, Lamine has often redirected the conversation away from football. “The real pressure wasn’t football. My mother having me at 16 and my father having to go out and make a living that’s real pressure.”

Perhaps that’s what family offers young athletes today. Not a way to escape the pressure, but a place where it doesn’t define them. Where success isn’t measured by contracts or headlines, but by whether they’re still the older brother who plays with the younger brother. That’s upbringing that comes from culture. Because we can all resonate to the sentence: “you going out?… bring your younger brother with you”.

Today the MoreThanGoals community celebrates African-Moroccan superstar Lamine Yamal with an ode to family.

Lamine between his father, Mounir Nasraoui, and his mother, Sheila Ebana, with his little brother in a tuxedo of his own. Two roots in one frame: a Moroccan father, an Equatoguinean mother, a boy from Rocafonda, Mataró who became the face of a new Barcelona.

❤️

The same smile. The Moroccan side of the family the e

Marcos André Batista dos Santos was born in Nazaré das Farinhas, Bahia, on 13 March 1974. The nickname came early vampiro and capeta welded together, a gap-toothed grin that friends decided looked part vampire, part devil. It stuck harder than most of his career did.

He was a defensive midfielder. Vitória found him, PSV took him to the Netherlands, and Corinthians made him a name, where he won back-to-back Brazilian titles in 1998 and 1999 and the first Club World Cup in 2000. Then Inter Milan, Paris Saint-Germain, a spell in Kuwait, and a return to Brazil with Brasiliense before he retired. It was a long career, and a well-travelled one, but it was never a quiet one.

In 1999 he posed n**e for a Brazilian magazine. That is the thing many remember first, ahead of the caps and the titles, and he has never pretended otherwise. The images outlived the shoot and became their own strange currency online. He shrugged it off then and shrugs it off now.

At the 2002 World Cup he was a squad man. Brazil won it; Vampeta played eighteen minutes, on for Ronaldinho against Turkey with the score level, and never featured again. He does not dress it up. He was there, he got his medal, and he is honest about how little he did to earn the moment.

That honesty is the second career. On Jovem Pan and in the resenha shows he co-hosts, he says what former players usually leave in the dressing room sharp, unbothered, occasionally at his own expense. He put his life down the same way, in a memoir he titled Sem Cortes. No cuts. The grin is still there, and so is the refusal to pretend.

> MORE THAN GOALS

Twenty-two appearances for England at major tournaments. World Cups and European Championships. At the time he retired from international football, no England outfield player had appeared in more.

Take a room full of football fans and tell them to list England’s greatest players. Wait to see how long before someone names the Stepney-born left-back, of Barbadian descent, who ended up England’s most-capped full-back.

Cole was not simply among the best left-backs of his generation. Many held him as the standard. Cristiano Ronaldo called him one of the toughest defenders he faced. Ronaldinho said much the same.

He was up against the best, and he shut them down. He read the game so far ahead that while the winger was working out what he wanted to do, Cole had already worked out what he would not let him do. Then he overlapped, ran, and attacked. An all-round footballer in a defender’s shirt.

Three league titles. Seven FA Cups, more than any player in the competition’s history. A Champions League. Managers came and went, but on England’s left there was always the same answer. He never scored in 107 caps. That is often called an omission. Look at it another way. Scoring was never his job. Stopping the man opposite him was.

As England chase the World Cup again in 2026, Cole’s work has carried on off the pitch. Since retiring he has coached at Chelsea, Everton, Birmingham City and with England’s Under-21s under Lee Carsley, before taking his first head coach role at AC Cesena in Italy. He has worked with the Chelsea Foundation and backed campaigns for equality and inclusion in the game.

“I went through my 20-year career span just trying to give my best and be good enough,” Cole said on his Premier League Hall of Fame induction. That is what he gave England, across 22 matches on the biggest stages the game has.

> MORE THAN GOALS

Written by Ayomide Adeyemi