Carlos Augusto is no longer an ugly duckling

If there was one thing Carlos Augusto was fairly certain of during his teenage years, it was that football could never be his career. Of course, adolescence is a strange time, when rock-solid certainties quickly turn into insecurities or absurdities, but that fair-haired, light-eyed lad in the middle, watching most of his teammates play, felt he was lacking something: after all, they called him ‘Perna de Pau’, ‘Wooden Leg’. “I’ve always been the ugly duckling of the youth academy,” he told Globo years ago. And he felt like the ugly duckling because not a single one of the Corinthians officials – the club he’d played for since he was twelve – would have predicted a future for him in Brazilian football, let alone on the international stage. Marcio Zanardi, the coach of the São Paulo club’s Under-15s, said of him years later: “He was a capable and athletic player, but average; he certainly didn’t stand out in terms of either technique or physique. He was an intelligent and thoughtful lad, perhaps too intelligent and thoughtful to be a footballer. Because in football, you need instinct and the ability to improvise.”

Carlos Augusto developed that instinct and ability to improvise as he went along.

It all began whilst he was under the management of Marcio Zanardi. Carlos Augusto played as a winger, but the manager had to move him back: all his full-backs were injured and he was the only left-footed player. In a short space of time, he went from being a regular substitute to first a backup option, then a convincing one, and finally a key player. So much so that he made it into the first team and signed his first professional contract. However, he was never regarded as a key player.

So when Monza came in with four million euros, Corinthians were taken aback at first, but accepted straight away. ‘Four million for Carlos Augusto?’, they asked themselves with a smile. ‘Right away!’

He believed he had secured a bargain. In fact, it was Monza that had secured the bargain: three seasons later, they sold him to Inter for €15.25 million. In Brianza, the once-overlooked talent had evolved, if not into a star, then at least into a top-class player.

It was bound to turn out this way. Carlos Augusto is Brazilian but ill-suited to South American football. Too precise, too clinical, not spectacular enough to appeal overseas. A no-nonsense player who, when he does something, does it because he knows that is exactly what the team needs. A player you don’t see much of, but who’s always there when needed. It makes you smile to think they used to call him ‘Loco’. Not because he was mad, but because crazy things happened to him – often things that seemed implausible. “We called him ‘Loco’ because strange things were always happening to Carlos: he’d fall at the worst possible moment, get hit by the ball… Sometimes he’d charge into a tackle and only come to a halt when he hit the fence. That’s just how he was,” Fabricio Oya, a team-mate from the Corinthians youth team, told Globo. Oya was one of those players who showed great promise but didn’t go on to have the same career in football as the then ‘ugly duckling’.

Neither Simone Inzaghi nor Cristian Chivu cared that Carlos Augusto was considered unsuitable for a professional career. Both the Italian manager and the Romanian coach always found a place for the Brazilian, whether in midfield or in defence. The reason is simple: “He almost always does the right thing,” said Cristian Chivu, and when he doesn’t, he doesn’t cause any damage. Something that’s increasingly rare for a defender these days.