Just when it was all coming together for Felipe Anderson, the Lazio midfielder was hit with a double-whammy of adversity.
Last Tuesday, in the wake of yet another goalscoring performance in Serie A (this time against city rivals AS Roma in the Derby della Capitale), the 21-year-old Brazilian learned his father had been detained in connection with a double murder.
According to reports, Sebastiao Gomes chased down a motorcyclist in his Fiat following a scuffle in Brasilia, and both vehicles crashed into a house. A woman inside was killed, as was the man on the motorbike. Gomes subsequently turned himself into police.
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Understandably shaken by the news, Felipe Anderson sat out Lazio’s Wednesday appointment in the Coppa Italia. The next day he suffered a knee injury in training and was ruled out for at least three weeks.
Both the family trouble and the knock could not have come at a worse time for the former Santos playmaker, who had just started to turn heads in Serie A. His five goals and five assists, as well as an eye-popping 21 shots, in his previous five matches seemed to herald the arrival of another Brazilian blue-chipper. But now, with his progress again disrupted, he faces a challenge to pick up where he left off.
Not that challenges are anything new to him.
A high-profile up-and-comer at the Vila Belmiro following his 2007 move from Coritiba, Felipe Anderson served as Paulo Henrique Ganso’s understudy before the latter’s switch to Sao Paulo five years later. In 2012 he broke out with an impressive campaign in the Campeonato Brasileiro and in January 2013 looked poised to lead his country to success at the South American Youth Championship.
The tournament, as it happened, was an unmitigated disaster for Brazil. They finished bottom of their group—failing to quality for the FIFA U-20 World Cup—and Felipe Anderson, along with Adryan and Mattheus Oliveira, shouldered much of the blame for the debacle, although there was plenty to go around.
Back at Santos he quickly became a target of the fans, who abused him for not living up to his “Novo Ganso” handle, in reference to Paulo Henrique, and the following June the club eagerly accepted Lazio’s €8 million offer for his services.
“That hurt me a little,” he admitted in a December interview with Globo. “Ganso’s time was magical, and people expected me to do everything and more.”
He arrived at Lazio with an ankle injury and never really caught the eye of then-manager Vladimir Petkovic, although Edoardo Reja, who replaced the Bosnian mid-season, turned to him as a regular substitute near the end of the schedule. Still, his first year in Italy was nothing to write home about, and through the summer there was talk he might leave the club on loan.
That he started just three matches between August and December seemed to reinforce the notion that Felipe Anderson would never reach the heights once expected of him. But then Antonio Candreva went down with a hamstring injury and new manager Stefano Pioli turned to him for a Dec. 7 encounter with Parma.
He was exceptional.
Using his pace to take on and beat his markers from a wider position (he routinely made Fabiano Santacroce look foolish) he was easily Lazio’s best player and in the 59th minute scored his first goal for the club after stroking a Filip Djordjevic cross into the back of the net.
After that there was no stopping him. The following week he assisted on two Stefano Mauri goals in a 3-0 win over Atalanta, and eight days later he bagged a brace in a 2-2 draw with Inter Milan. Against Sampdoria in Lazio’s first match of 2015 he delivered a performance that had the opposition manager gushing at the final whistle, despite losing 3-0 to a Felipe Anderson goal and pair of assists.
“Felipe Anderson looked like Cristiano Ronaldo tonight,” exclaimed Sinisa Mihajlovic. “He was the only one who created real problems; he changed the game and was Man of the Match by a mile.”
When asked how he might have contained the Brazilian, Mihajlovic suggested “a few kicks” might have deterred him. “Mind you, to do that you’ve got to catch him,” he added.
Unfortunately, Felipe Anderson won’t have a chance to build on that showing, or his goalscoring display in the subsequent Derby della Capitale, until sometime next month. In the meantime he faces a period of rehabilitation, and concerns regarding his father will surely trouble him as well.
And so, as much as he leaves some extraordinary memories from his best spell as a professional footballer, he also leaves questions.
Were the last five weeks a flash in the pan, or the promise of a rare talent finally and beautifully in bloom? Will the layoff, having come at such a crucial juncture, derail the rest of his season, or even his Lazio career? How will he deal with his father’s situation?
No doubt Felipe Anderson would readily exchange the adversity for circumstances rather more secure, but the best scenario remaining is that he emerges from it even stronger, even better and even more sure of himself than he proved to be this last month and a bit.
It’s what he’ll be working for—what his club, his fans and admirers of dazzling football will be hoping for.
Jerrad Peters is a Winnipeg-based writer. Follow him on Twitter