Vitinho has come a long way but he wants to achieve even greater things. Having grown up in Belo Horizonte, resettled in Belgium as an 18-year-old and won the Championship with Burnley, he now dreams of representing Brazil at the next World Cup.
The full-back was a regular for the Under-20s but he is yet to make his debut for the senior side. With Marcelo and Dani Alves no longer galavanting up and down the wings, Brazil need new blood at full-back. Fernando Diniz, the manager of the national side, picked Danilo at right-back and Renan Lodi on the left for their World Cup qualifiers against Bolivia and Peru earlier this month, but Vitinho believes he has what it takes to step up.
“Being called up to the Brazilian national team is my main goal,” he says. “I will achieve that. I know it. I have to play well at Burnley, help my team and then I’m sure I’ll be picked.”
Vincent Kompany’s style of play may well help with that ambition. The Burnley manager likes his team to play with the ball. Diniz employs a similar model with his teams, especially Fluminense, where he is also in charge. Fluminense won the Rio de Janeiro state championship this year and are doing well in the Copa Libertadores.
Vitinho’s first meeting with Kompany came on the pitch. “I met him when we were both playing in Belgium,” he says. “We faced off a few times and he liked how I played. When he came to Burnley, he talked to me and I accepted the proposal because I liked his style of play. The Championship has a lot of duels and physical contact, but Kompany also wanted to build a team able to keep the ball and play offensively by creating opportunities through possession. That made my adaptation easier.”
Burnley blew the competition away in the Championship last season, winning the league by 10 points and losing just three of their 46 games. Vitinho’s first season in England could not have gone much better but he says their success was hard earned. “It was in the day-to-day work, in the way that we felt during training and games. Kompany is very well balanced. He showed me that good things, the right things, come from working hard. That’s what I’ve been doing.”
A footballer career at the top level does not come easily. Vitinho joined Cruzeiro, one of the two biggest clubs in Belo Horizonte, at the age of six. His father was instrumental from the start, giving up his job to take the young defender to training. He only played one game for Cruzeiro before being sold to Cercle Brugge at the age of 18. “It all happened in five days,” he says. “I wasn’t even envisioning a move to Europe, but I saw that it was better for me and my family. It was my first time away from them, which was very hard. I did not speak English or French at the time.”
Vitinho in his days at Cercle Brugge in Belgium. Photograph: Isosport/MB Media/Getty Images
Vitinho does not hide the fact that the first two of his three years in Belgium were difficult. He played during the first season, but had to recover from an injury in the second. Things only changed for the better in the third year. “I had lost my safety net, but that was also what helped me mature,” he says.
“I was very young and had to change my mindset and my way of living, to adapt to a new reality. All this by myself.” Despite being a young man in a new continent, he would not give up. He was determined to be like Cafu, his football hero. “A Brazilian does not leave his country just for a walk, but to make a difference in the team that chose him,” he says.
He and his Burnley teammates need to make some changes if they are to remain a Premier League team. Burnley are 19th in the league and still without a win after four games. Vitinho has missed the last few games with a knee injury but is hoping to be back in the team when Manchester United visit Turf Moor on Saturday night.
“The game against United will be one of the most difficult of the season, because they have a very talented team,” he says. “We have the support of our fans, who give us a lot of strength playing at Turf Moor so we have to take advantage of that.”
As for his manager, Vitinho thinks Kompany will be relishing the opportunity to face United. “For Kompany, games like this must be very special because he has a great history with City and a great rivalry with United. Just like the first week of the season was very special for him, facing the club where he played most of his career.”
Burnley struggled against City on the opening night of the season, losing 3-0, but they are slowly finding their feet in the top flight. “It was a very difficult match, which we expected due to the quality of their team, but we are always looking to improve. We want to perform better and have a great game against United.” He will be up against some of the Brazil players he hopes to join in future squads, so it is the perfect time to make a mark.
