The curious case of Gerson Vieira: From captaining Neymar and Coutinho to becoming an ISL stalwart
"Neymar and the staff called me the President" - Gerson Vieira in 2015.
Brazil is full of football players. Alex Bellos, a connoisseur of Brazilian football, wrote in his 2002 book Futebol that there are about 23,000 professional footballers in Brazil. In the 15 years since Bellos’ book was first rolled out, that number has swelled immeasurably.
Brazilian footballers are everywhere; from the beaches to the deserts and from the mountains to the metros, football players from Brazil grace every continent on this planet in huge numbers.
India, too, has seen the steady influx of Brazilian players over the years, with the likes of Beto and Jose Ramirez Barreto firmly entrenched in Indian football’s history with their contributions to the sport in India over the course of the 21st century.
Gerson Fraga Vieira is one of the many Brazilians to have plied his trade in India. The 24-year-old rejoined Indian Super League club Mumbai City FC earlier today, extending his stay with the Mumbai-based club by another year.
Having said that, Gerson wasn’t any random Brazilian when he started out. The defender came through the ranks at Brazilian giants Gremio and attracted eyeballs early on in his career, even captaining his country at various age groups except for the senior team, which he hasn’t even played for yet.
In the 2009 FIFA Under-17 World Cup, Gerson led the Brazil Under-17 team that comprised the likes of Neymar, Philippe Coutinho and Casemiro, three of the biggest Brazilian stars in world football today.
While Gerson’s leadership was a valuable ingredient of every Brazilian national youth team when he started out, Brazil’s premature exit at the group stage of the 2009 Under-17 World Cup?—?their worst result at that level?—?probably signalled an end to the current Mumbai City defender’s career at the very top.
From being tipped as the future of Brazilian football when he was named the captain over more promising stars to playing at an Indian club, Gerson has been through it all.
A look at the careers of his 2009 Brazil U-17 teammates adds context to Gerson’s journey to India.
Neymar, who was at Santos during the 2009 U-17 World Cup, has since gone on to play for Barcelona and captain the senior Brazil national team. Coutinho, meanwhile, has played at elite European clubs like Inter Milan and Liverpool since moving on from Vasco da Gama, while Casemiro recently won his third Champions League title with Real Madrid.
All the while, Gerson had been on the books of Gremio, who farmed him out in multiple loan deals around the world, leaving the once-promising defender to jump around from Red Bull Brasil to Uruguay’s Atenas and finally find a home in India in the ISL.
That trajectory, though, is one that Gerson himself chose. In an interview with ESPN Brazil in 2015, the centre-back said during his time at Atenas: "Most of my colleagues who played in the national teams migrated to European football and I took another course. Punta del Este is wonderful, quiet, outside the natural beauty, and since I'm a Gaucho, the adaptation here in Uruguay was much simpler."
The 2017/18 ISL season will be Gerson’s second in Indian football. Having helped Mumbai City to dominate the defensive numbers en route a semi-final appearance in ISL-3, Gerson will once again be seen guarding his team’s back-line alongside the more experienced Lucian Goian later this year.
While Gerson continues to take to Indian football like a duck to water, one fails to understand how this once-promising captain of Brazil’s junior national teams has been lost to the modern forces of world football, as his decision to take a different route from his national team peers suggests.
Brazil’s loss seems to be the ISL’s gain, as Mumbai City look to harness the potential of the Presidente to the fullest in their bid to win the title next season.