Vitor Flora – Liverpool’s Unknown Boy From Brazil

There is something undeniably romantic in a story of a young player plucked from anonymity by a big club.  This is partly because such stories happen so rarely but mostly it is because it is easy for the rest of us to identify with such a player; to want him to succeed and prove that perhaps there is latent talent in all of us if only someone bothered to look close enough.

It is why many were so intrigued by Vitor Flora when he joined Liverpool in September of 2008.  Apart from the basic facts – that he was an eighteen year old Brazilian striker – absolutely nothing was known about him.  This lack of knowledge wasn’t limited to England because even in his native Brazil very few people had heard of him.

Initially that seemed strange given that his club of origin – Botafogo – is one of the biggest and most titled clubs in Brazil.  Closer inspection, however, revealed that the Botafogo club that Flora had played for wasn’t the one based in Rio de Janiero but rather Botafogo SP, a club based in Ribeirão Preto (in the São Paulo state) who played their football in what is effectively the third tier of Brazilian football.

This article was originally published on The Botafogo Star.