How Real Madrid rule at recruiting in Brazil
Christopher Pierce
Updated on March 10, 2026
A version of this article was originally published by The Athletic in March 2020. It has been updated to reflect events since then.
Neymar was 13 years old when he first visited Real Madrid.
He travelled to Spain with his father in 2005. They spent three weeks in a posh hotel, all expenses paid. The youngster trained at Real’s academy and met first-team players like Ronaldo and Zinedine Zidane. In the evenings, he ate with Robinho. The two shared an agent, Wagner Ribeiro, and when Neymar flew back to Brazil, it looked likely that he would also follow in Robinho’s footsteps by leaving Santos and trying his luck in Madrid.
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Real wanted him to join their youth ranks. They would take care of his education, arrange a house for the family and find a job for Neymar Sr. The paperwork had been signed off by the club, who just needed one final signature, from the player’s mother. Neymar was still just a kid, a walking bundle of caveats and potential pitfalls, but Real thought they had signed the next big thing.
We now know that this was a Sliding Doors moment. Santos got wind of the offer and kickstarted the extraordinary fundraising effort that would keep Neymar at the Vila Belmiro stadium until 2013. They scrabbled to match Real’s proposal and, after some soul-searching, Neymar and his family decided that he should continue his development on home soil.
It was not the last time Real made a concerted attempt to sign the forward. In 2009, two lawyers representing the club spent 11 days in Sao Paulo, drawing up another contract at Ribeiro’s office. Their efforts came to nothing, as did one final, last-gasp push in May 2013, just before Neymar signed for Barcelona. That was a cruel blow, one that reportedly left Real president Florentino Perez reeling. Not only had Neymar escaped Real’s grasp; he had gone there instead.
The aftershocks of that snub are still being felt. Madrid, chastened by the experience, resolved not to let it happen again. Four years later, they signed the most hotly-tipped young attacker in the Brazilian game, Vinicius Junior. The following summer, they repeated the trick by plucking Rodrygo from Santos. Endrick, the latest wunderkind, will move to the Bernabeu in 2024. All three agreed to join Real before turning 18, despite serious interest from Europe’s other top clubs.
The total outlay for those three transfers — the best part of €160 million — underlines Real’s ongoing commitment to unearthing the next Neymar (or Neymars). Yet it is not just money that has allowed them to move ahead in this arms race. Other clubs can free up those sorts of funds but Real have also been winning the battle for hearts and minds, convincing youngsters and their families that their project is right for them. It is a question of feeling, of trust, of belonging.
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These matters require a personal touch — a fact which goes some way to explaining why, in this era of bloated scouting networks and talent-identification departments, one man in particular is swaying things in Real’s favour.
His name is Jose Antonio Calafat de Souza but everybody calls him Juni. He does not speak with the press and his public profile is on a par with that of the Invisible Man. He is the kind of person to whom adjectives like “mysterious” readily stick and for good reason: he is Real’s chief scout, yet his name is not even listed on the club’s website.
Calafat started out as as a journalist, coming to prominence as an analyst on the television show Fiebre Maldini. His knowledge of South American football in particular won him many admirers and eventually earned him a scouting position at Real. Among his early recommendations was Casemiro, a gifted player but not obviously a star-in-waiting. The success of that transfer only added to his mystique and while not all of his subsequent picks have paid off quite so spectacularly, he clearly has an eye for potential: Fede Valverde, the all-action Uruguayan midfielder, was another indelible tick in the win column.
Calafat’s brief has broadened in recent years but Brazil remains his primary area of expertise. And for all his ability as a talent-spotter, it is his knack for connecting with young players and those around them that sets him apart. This much quickly becomes clear when you speak to anyone involved in the Vinicius, Rodrygo and Endrick transfers. “All of the other big clubs have representatives in Brazil but Juni makes the difference,” says Nick Arcuri, Rodrygo’s agent.
It helps that Calafat is fluent in Portuguese — he is Spanish but spent much of his childhood in Sao Paulo — but it goes beyond that. He understands that parents want reassurances about playing time and opportunities; that money is important but not everything; that moving to Europe is a seismic change. A starry-eyed 17-year-old might not immediately take all these factors into consideration, which is why a special effort must be made with families and agents.
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“In any market, it is important to develop relationships with agents and parents,” explains Jeff Vetere, a former Real scout. “That’s particularly true in Brazil, where maybe 90 per cent of players are coming from a poor, working-class background. We are talking about transforming their lives.”
Calafat puts in the hard yards. In the case of Vinicius, that meant 14 months of meetings with the player and his loved ones before Real reached an agreement with Flamengo in May 2017. Rodrigo Caetano, the Brazilian club’s director of football at the time, recalls being bowled over by Calafat’s measured, patient approach.
“Juni had been speaking with Vinicius’ family for a long time,” Caetano tells The Athletic. “I was really impressed by how much background research he had done on the player and his family. He knew about all of the people around Vinicius, knew what they thought. Then he opened up a dialogue with the club and with the player’s agent at the time, Frederico Pena. It was a close relationship and that made the player buy into the project. That was what allowed him to seal the transfer for Real Madrid.”
The Rodrygo signing, which went through the following summer, was the culmination of even more patient approximation. By the time Calafat set up talks between Perez and Santos president Jose Carlos Peres — via FaceTime from a dark London cafe — he had been on the case for four years.
“Juni had been following Rodrygo’s development since 2014,” Arcuri tells The Athletic. “Willian Jose moved to Real Madrid Castilla at that time and I recommended Rodrygo to Juni. He was just 13. I told him he was a kid who could be Real Madrid quality in the future.
“Juni was always very professional and honest with us. He made everyone feel comfortable. We knew that he was a person who would put the truth first, whether Madrid ended up firming up their interest or not. When he did decide to pursue the transfer, that gave Rodrygo a lot of confidence in his choice. He followed Rodrygo’s progress closely and played a big role in sealing the deal for Real Madrid. He presented the best sporting project.”
“Project” is a word that comes up again and again when it comes to Calafat’s work. He does not deal with formal contract offers: his job is to sell Real Madrid as the perfect place for a player to realise his potential. For some that means gaining experience with Real Madrid Castilla, the B team. But the examples of Casemiro and now Vinicius, neither of whom hung around for too long in the second team, show that there is a clear path into the senior set-up. “Everything Rodrygo dreamed of, they laid in front of him,” says Arcuri. “Paris Saint-Germain, Borussia Dortmund and Barcelona were also after him but Real set out plans for the short term and for the future.”
Calafat’s work and conduct have won him favour at boardroom level, too.
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“He knows the South American market very well, for a start,” says Caetano. “That helps. He has held various positions in football, so he knows how to build relationships. He has an ‘in’ with lots of teams here. The way in which he approaches clubs really makes the difference. He’s very professional and respectful. He doesn’t look for shortcuts or try to cut corners.”
The race to identify and sign the best youngsters in Brazil is intensifying. The biggest clubs are no longer content to wait until a player is 20 or 21. They want to get a deal done when the player is 16 or 17, monitor his progress closely until he can move, then shape his tactical and technical development. This has changed even in the last decade. Vinicius was on the cover of Spanish sports daily Marca before even training with Flamengo’s first team.
There is an acceleration here. Whatever your view on the morality of it, it is hard to put the brakes on.
“The market pays for potential,” says Caetano. “Most clubs here don’t have a B team or an under-23 team. Why? Because Brazilian clubs identify talent very early. There are exceptions, of course, and some players do end up breaking through after turning 20. But in general, many young players here are fast-tracked into the first team. They skip stages because their talent demands it. That’s when European clubs start to identify them. They prefer to buy younger players in the hope that they will establish themselves in Europe, rather than in Brazil.”
The Brazilian league ultimately suffers here: the best talent is whisked away just as fans are starting to get excited. The clubs, most of which are debt-ridden, cannot refuse the money. On an individual level, there will be winners and losers: some youngsters will inevitably be chewed up and spat out by the system. The example of Reinier, signed by Real after just 15 games for Flamengo and now struggling to make an impact on loan at Girona, is illustrative.
For the lucky ones, though, it will be the making of them.
“I see it as a positive when youngsters with potential are challenged like that,” says Carlos Amadeu, who coached both Vinicius and Rodrygo in the Brazil under-20 side. “They get to play with the best players in the world, so they only benefit from the process. Today, these kids are able to adapt much more quickly than they used to: they arrive more prepared, learn the language and have support from the clubs. Vinicius and Rodrygo have risen to the challenge at one of the biggest clubs in the world. That’s the thing with talent: the more you expose it to new levels, the more it blossoms.”
All of which explains why the most ambitious European clubs are sniffing around more than ever before. “All the big teams have a presence in Brazil,” says Caetano, but he cites Real Madrid’s two major rivals in the market as Manchester City and Barcelona. City’s South American operation is based in Buenos Aires and led by Joan Patsy, an ally of Txiki Begiristain, their director of football. Barcelona rely on Deco, their former midfielder, who has close relations with president Joan Laporta and represents a growing number of Brazilian players.
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Reputation counts here. Just consider Watford, who signed Richarlison from Fluminense in 2017 and then repeated the trick with promising striker Joao Pedro three years later. They have been aided by their affiliation with Udinese, whose man in South America is Rafa Monfort, a respected former Real Madrid scout. And it was surely no coincidence that Gabriel Martinelli pitched up at Arsenal soon after Edu Gaspar took on the role of technical director.
“It can sometimes be as simple as having a Brazilian figurehead,” says Vetere. “Leonardo helped at PSG and Milan in this regard, and it was the same for Juninho Pernambucano at Lyon.”
Those are big names, with significant cachet in the game. But if Calafat’s success demonstrates anything, it is that quiet, diligent work can often be just as effective as bluster.
The results speak for themselves. We will never know what Neymar might have achieved at the Bernabeu, but Vinicius and Rodrygo are no sane person’s idea of a consolation prize in 2023. And while Endrick may or may not become a superstar, Real’s man in Brazil has put them in a position to find out.
(Photos: Getty Images/Design: Eamonn Dalton)
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