Diego Souza lives a peaceful phase and says he turned football into an ‘amusement park’

Diego Souza was determined to hang up his boots in January 2020, at the age of 34.

Without a club and disgusted with his own performance in the passages through Botafogo and São Paulo, the striker expressed to businessman Eduardo Uram, father Marco Aurélio and wife Luciana Iunes the desire to put an end to his career. An unexpected call from Renato Gaúcho changed everything.

Twenty-two days after leaving the Rio de Janeiro club with no prospects, he appeared at Grêmio with a clear goal within himself: to have fun playing again.

“Football is my life, I’ve always lived it. In fact, that’s all I know how to do. Since I was 14 I don’t have weekends, I live in concentration, travel, and it’s game after game… So, football needed to come back to be an amusement park for me. As much as I had to do all this, if I wasn’t fully satisfied, I didn’t want to anymore”, he tells Sheet.

“I can still miss it when I don’t play, so I keep going. If an athlete’s life were just to get on the field, it would be a huge difficulty to stop, nobody would want to. lighter. It’s still a heavy routine, but I’m having fun”, he adds.

A midfielder by birth and seen as a player of rare technical potential in his generation, Diego went through a curious process in his career. He completely changed his role until he reached the condition of striker, of goalkeeper. He has been Grêmio’s top scorer in each of his three seasons with the team.

In the first, he scored 28 goals in 54 games, the most goalscorer since he debuted for Fluminense in 2003. In the second, he scored 24 in 51, but saw the team fall to Serie B. This year, he scored nine in 15 games. In April, she surpassed the 76 balls in Renato Gaúcho’s net for the club.

“I’ve never been attached to numbers, I’m not attached to anything, in fact. Football today has gotten uglier. The number 10 of the teams is the tactical system. It seems that we are in a laboratory making players who know certain functions well. for a player to change his position, he is more lost than blind in a shootout”, he explains.

As great as the talent that raised him to good seasons for Grêmio himself, in his first spell in 2007, in addition to Palmeiras, Vasco and Sport, is the number of controversies he carries. It is almost impossible to dissociate him from troubled moments.

In 2008, at Palmeiras, he sent a message to the captain and idol Marcos after a defeat against Fluminense. “Dirty clothes we wash at home”, he vented.

A year later, he got into trouble with defender Domingos, from Santos. expelled,
jumped the publicity sign on the way to the locker room and came back to sweep the rival defender. He was eventually suspended for seven games.

Even living a great phase at the São Paulo club, in 2010, he was the target of the fans’ indignation and responded by being substituted in a match against Atlético-GO. He cursed fans and made obscene gestures. On the way out of the field he still mocked: “Boos?”.

For Sport, in 2015, he gave controversial interviews. At Grêmio, he celebrated last year a goal against Bahia by drumming the ball, imitating a tambourine, in response to criticism for participating in a party with the cast. There were also constant questions about his physical shape.

“I suffered from a lot of labels. I’ve been overweight, I’ve been through very difficult personal moments, this trajectory is not easy. Nobody wants that, but age comes, and often we can’t train the way we need to. he’s always in pain, he has little preparation time, and that gets in the way.

“The worker has a beer on the weekend, has a barbecue, but we can’t because people judge us in a way that doesn’t exist. If you lose, you have no life. You can’t go out to dinner. . You need to be very strong for all this”, he adds.

The player was shaken by the few chances in the Brazilian team. The worst of them was when he was selected as a starter by coach Dunga against Bolivia, on October 11, 2009. He was substituted after just 45 minutes, at an altitude of 3,600 m in La Paz, and saw his chances of going to the 2010 World Cup crumble. .

“This episode hurt me a lot. And it’s curious because at the end of my career, when I thought I wasn’t going to go anymore, I ended up being called [por Tite] and experienced that environment again. This soothed my heart. In 2009 it was my biggest frustration, it could have been better tested. This made me rebellious. I was almost sold and missed the opportunity. The second, even without going to the Cup, was completely different”, he says.

The return to Grêmio brought not only renewal as a player, but also new career plans. Close to his 37th birthday — on June 17 — he thinks for the first time about his post-career. Becoming a coach is among the possibilities.

“I never thought about becoming a coach. I used to say I couldn’t afford it, because the coach lives the same life as the player, but from January to now there was a snap of maybe being able to pass on a little of what I learned”, he explains.

The player’s idea, first, is to rest. Take a trip with childhood friends, still without a defined destination. “First I’m going to travel, then I think. I don’t like the idea of ​​having to take courses to become a coach, I’ve been in football for 20 years. There’s always something to learn, but everyone’s way is very particular.”

This being the way, he intends to use Renato’s “boleiro language”. “Today everyone is politically correct. He is eye to eye, speaks our language. I like that”, he says.

Diego prefers not to speculate what the future will be at the end of 2022, when his contract with Grêmio ends. Until then, he still wants to help the club return to Serie A — at least as long as he can have fun on the pitch.