So… Listen to this… Nowadays a lot of young players get called
the next ronaldo, the next messi, the next whatever… The entire world has become a little too obsessed
with wonderkids… but back in 2005 that didn’t really happen that much… Which made it 10 times more shocking when
at 10 years old, Jean Chera started being referred to as the “next Pelé”.... Look, I don’t even wanna say too much in
this intro, cause I don’t spoil the story, but if you know nothing about him, let me
tell you this is easily one of the most interesting and shocking videos I’ve posted… Let’s just say that at 15, Jean Chera was
already being paid millions a year and just 6 years later, he was being forced to sell
his furniture on facebook marketplace in order to get by, at one point even sleeping on the
street and begging clubs on Twitter to sign him… And the worst of all, according to many, his
downfall was all his father’s fault… So… I think you get what I mean now… let’s
go... Right from the time he was 5 years old, his
father was clearly obsessed… He recorded every single one of his games… And to be fair, I get it, look at that kid,
he’s insanely good… I’d probably do the same, if I was convinced
I had the next Messi on my hands… Regardless, for a long time he kept those
videos to himself, it was only when Jean was already 9 years old, that a friend of his
father, convinced him to leave one of the DVD’s at the football academy he worked
for and the very next day the president of the club was calling, completely desperate,
offering them everything he possibly could to get the family to move into their town
so Jean could join the club… And well they did… There was only one problem, a year later… one way or another, those DVDs made it to
national television… It started with a Sunday afternoon talk show,
but then it was the news, every sports broadcast, magazine and newspaper… Suddenly, Jean Chera was the most famous kid
in the country… He had everyone from Man Utd, PSV and Real
Madrid scouting him, but instead he opted to slow things down and take it easy, instead
opting to stay in Brazil and join Santos… Still don’t for a second think this wasn’t
a huge leap in his career, before the move he had lived his whole life in the countryside,
he had literally never even seen the ocean… And suddenly, he was living in a city with
18 million people, earning 10 thousand reais a month, 20 times more than the minimum wage
and signing a sponsorship deal with Umbro… Add to this the fact that he was a left footed
winger, who had to go through hormone treatment in order to grow and before you knew it, he
was no longer “the new Pelé”, he was the “Messi from Mato Grosso”... But the overwhelming comparisons wouldn’t
stop there… Because you see while Jean Chera was absolutely
crushing everyone at Santos’ academy, there was another kid who he shared the spotlight
with… Yeah, I’m talking about Neymar… And believe it or not, back then, Jean was
the one the club referred to as their biggest prospect… He was that guy… But the thing is, Neymar was 3 years older
than him, meaning that by the time Jean turned 15 and began negotiating his first professional
contract with the club… Neymar was already playing his second season
as a pro… where he would pull 42 goals and 15 assists in 60 matches… So just imagine the kind of expectations that
were being put on Jean, who was not even seen as the next Neymar, but the one who was supposed
to outdo every single one of his achievements… As one newspaper at the time wrote “Jean
lives the life of an adult, he trains with the under 17s in the morning, with the under
15s in the afternoon and attends class at night… And everywhere he goes, his fans follow”... In fact, had a law not been passed just a
year or two before forbidding any kids younger than 16 from playing professional football,
he would probably have debuted even earlier… There was no doubt in anyone's mind, with
Ganso and Neymar already on the team and even with Gabigol being the same age as him, Jean
Chera would be the next one to become a star at Santos… All they needed was that contract and man… Here's where everything got crazy… You see, despite all the media craze, over
the previous years there had actually been a lot of problems between Jean and the club…
or I guess I could say between his father and the club… So, the guy was a bit paranoid, he was absurdly
protective and over the years he began convincing himself that many people at the club were
trying to sabotage his son’s career because they were jealous of his success… If you asked him, he would tell you that when
the coaches didn’t call him up for the games, it was because they were jealous… When his teammates wouldn’t pass him the
ball, it was because they were jealous… He was convinced that everyone was working
against them… But if you asked the club you would get a
different story… When they got to negotiating his contract,
it was his father who made sure to make it as messy as it could get… Just picture this, when Neymar got his first
professional contract 2 years earlier, he was being paid 20 thousand reais a month… Jean was already earning 30 thousand before
he even made it as a professional and now his father was asking that they tripled it… In fact, not only was he asking for 90k in
his first year, he wanted his salary to be increased every year from there on out, 110k
in his second year and 130k by the third… Owh that’s if you put aside another minor
request, a sign on fee of 1 million reais… And believe it or not, it gets more ridiculous
than that, because his father, despite asking for all that money, wanted to keep half of
the player’s rights and 70% of his image rights… And well… once the club rejected all of
this and instead proposed that the player kept the same wage, while getting some extra
bonuses as well as a fair share of his image rights, the father went completely ballistic… It was one public statement after the other,
constantly degrading the club’s name, insisting that every big club in Europe was after them
and by the time the weekend rolled around, he was off on a plane to Italy, negotiating
his son’s transfer to Genoa… As the Santos president at the time would
state: “Those with big mouths, don’t get fed… We’re not crazy, there’s no certainty
that’ll become world class, if he wants to leave he can leave, one thing is sure,
I’ll never pay him what his father demanded”... And the worst thing is that these negotiations
weren’t even the worst stunt his father pulled, but we’ll get there… Regardless, you gotta give him one thing… Only days later, Jean did sign a three year
contract with Genoa and according to many sources, not only was he earning the equivalent
of 200 thousand reais a month there, but he also got a great sign on fee, a car and a
beachfront two story house with a pool… Had everything been fine, we would be calling
his dad a genius… but instead well… The club wasn’t able to get him a visa before
the registration window closed, then they got in trouble for even trying to register
a non-European underage player and after being threatened with relegation by the FA, they
were forced to terminate his contract… Sure Jean probably got a great payout, but
out of nowhere, he was left without a club… And you know what’s funny in all of this,
there’s literally this thing the fans call the Santos curse, where any player who leaves
Santos for free ends up completely destroying their own careers, so I guess he can’t say
that he wasn’t warned… Nevertheless by November he settled on a deal
to join Flamengo, but after years of constantly being the most outstanding player at every
youth level, once he got there, things slowed down abruptly and one year later the 17 year
old wasn’t even getting selected for the under 17s… which eventually led Flamengo
to terminate his contract… But again, people wondered what changed? And the answer was simply, nothing… According to him, he wasn’t playing because
the club wasn’t paying him and according to the club, he wasn't playing because they
simply did not wanna have to deal with his father anymore… But hey, at least this led to one thing… I’m not sure if it was Jean who stood up
to him or what the hell happened, but once the dust settled, the father finally stopped
representing him, got him a proper agent and the guy got him a new deal at Atletico Paranaense… But again, after just 6 months, the club claimed
that not only had he failed to impress but according to them, even though by now he wasn’t
even handling the financial side of it all, his father was absolutely unbearable… And you see, it was at this point that some
reporters began catching on to the fact that seemingly every club kept complaining about
his father, so they went and began investigating what exactly was wrong with the guy, interviewing
everyone that they had ever worked with and the stories that came out were absolute insanity… It’s hard to even decide where to start
but let’s go… So back at Santos, things got so bad, that
at one point his father literally forced Jean to leave the pitch midway through a match
because he was upset at his teammates, which literally led the club to ban him from entering
their grounds. On another occasion, a coach subbed off Jean
at half time and his father got so paranoid that the coach was sabotaging his career that
he got the board to sack the poor guy… As that coach would tell the press: “That
kid is the victim of a crazy father who picks fights with everyone… At one point, Palmeiras wanted to sign him,
but once negotiations started, they had to stop the meeting, because they simply couldn’t
stand his father… Jean is a good kid, but his father ruins everything
for him”... Another coach even claimed that Jean used
to be a really hard working kid, but at one point he began refusing to practice his heading
and his weak foot, he even began refusing to track back, and when they asked him why,
he claimed his father had told him that “the best players always stay up front where they
can shine the brightest''... so yeah, great advice my guy… And if you’re wondering about the whole
Genoa fiasco, let me tell you they also found the agent that worked as the middleman in
all of that and he completely spilled the beans, not only did he confirm what the other
guy had said about the meeting with Palmeiras, but he told the reporters, that the father
would constantly go back on his word in negotiations, always trying to get more and more money and
that at Genoa, the problems with the visa weren’t the clubs fault, it had actually
been the father who had promised the club that he could get it all done, despite the
club insisting it wasn’t possible and it all culminated with the father getting into
some serious altercation with the president and being told to pack his bags and leave… Owh and of course at Flamengo, an unnamed
employee also told them that “The biggest problem was his father, he was always complaining,
always questioning everyone, demanding stuff… Everyone got tired of dealing with him”...
Regardless, let me tell you the curse wasn’t over… Because even after all of this got uncovered,
Jean managed to find new ways to hit rock bottom… Still banking on his reputation as the “Next
Neymar”, after all keep in mind that at this point he was only 18, he ended up joining
Cruzeiro on a short term contract, but he wasn’t even able to see that one through… Halfway into it, his new agent told him he
had received a proposal from West Ham that even included a sponsorship from Nike, so
once Cruzeiro began having second thoughts about including him in the first team and
proposed that he go on trial… He began feeling like he could easily get
more recognition somewhere else and quit… There was just a little problem… His agent was lying, simple as that, there
was no West Ham deal, no Nike, nothing… He was just trying to make himself seem like
some big shot… And so closing in on his 19th birthday, having
had either failed stints or failed negotiations with seemingly every big club in Brazil and
with everyone convinced he wasn’t capable of making it out of academy football… Jean decided to show everyone he could go
pro, so he ended up signing with Oeste in the Brazilian second tier… But 2 months later, the club was relegated
from their regional championship, a huge meltdown started and 11 players got their contracts
terminated… Not only was Jean one of them, he hadn't even
played a single match for the club at that point because they claimed he was too fat… At this point, he began really freaking out,
ended up moving all the way to Romania and joining CSU Craiova but that transfer ended
up breaking every record in the book and I mean this in the worst way possible… His contract was literally canceled after
only 10 days and a couple training sessions… Feeling completely lost, he just moved south
and joined Paniliakos in the Greek second tier and actually, he finally managed to get
his professional debut… In fact he even made 4 appearances for the
club, but I have to say, he didn’t score a single goal or get a single assist and the
team lost every one of those matches and just 5 months after his arrival, the club filed
for bankruptcy and got demoted to the 5th division, leading Jean to one of his most
depressing moments, being denied entry into his hotel once the club stopped paying for
his stay, being left stranded without his passport or wallet, not knowing a single word
of greek and ending up being forced to sleep on the street… Add to that the fact that a few weeks later,
he was even shamed after pretty much begging recently relegated Botafogo for a chance on
twitter… And yeah, it doesn’t get much worse than
that… Except, in this case, it actually does… Because, first of all, Botafogo never replied
and second, Jean ended up in the Spanish fourth division playing for Buelna… where he spent
so little time I literally don’t have anything to tell you about it… All that mattered was that a handful of weeks
, he was going back to Brazil, in order to sign for Cuiabá, which would become the 10th
club of his career, despite the fact he was only 20 years old… Again, after 41 minutes on the pitch, he was
released… This time, they claimed he was too out of
shape, lacked any commitment to training and partied too much… But hey, at least the 3rd tier club somehow
won their regional championship, which meant Jean had won a title… So I guess you can make of that what you will… But believe it or not, at this point he actually
made it back to Santos… Not because they still thought he would become
the “next Neymar”, but out of pity… They got him a 4 month long contract, at 900
reais a month, 100 times less than he had demanded from them just 4 years earlier and
well… only 100 bucks more than minimum wage… Their only goal was to get him in shape and
try to help him reignite his career, now that his father seemed to truly be out of the picture… So they got him a loan at Portuguesa Santista,
along with 13 other Santos players, in a sort of partnership between the clubs… He even scored 2 goals for them over the first
few weeks, including a decisive one right on his debut, but very early into the whole
thing he got seriously injured and if his mental state was already pretty shaky at that
point, after that he really lost it, he began eating his sorrows away and before they knew
it, he was more out of shape than ever… Even once he made it back from injury, he
failed to even show up for practice as he was struggling with his mental health and
the club was forced to terminate his contract, leading him to move back to his hometown with
his pregnant girlfriend and hitting the lowest of lows, trying to sell his furniture on his
facebook page, so he could save some money for when the kid was born… Leading most newspapers to assume this meant
he was giving up on football at the age of just 21… However, that wasn’t the case just yet,
the following day he’d make sure to announce that he was just taking a break so that he
could work on his mental health and spend some time with his son once he was born… And indeed, 6 months later, he ended up joining
4th tier Sinop, but after one year and 8 appearances for the club, he finally announced his retirement
for good… However, two thousand one hundred and eighty
days later, just earlier this year, he finally decided to come back to football, after his
son, now 7 years old, began questioning him about his past after finding clips of his
dad playing with Neymar on the internet… He has been playing in the third tier of the
Paulista regional championship ever since… When finally interviewed about his past, he
said “The pressure was out of this world, they called me everything from “New Messi”
to “The White Pelé”, from there on out, I was never a normal player again, everyone
wanted things to happen too fast, wherever we went, it was no longer Santos, it was Jean’s
team… Had things moved more slowly, had I stayed
at the club, things could have gone better… By the time I retired, even the thought of
football upset me, I couldn’t even play with my friends for fun, it was all too much”
