Markão becomes top scorer in the cradle of the pandemic and leads team from Wuhan in China

Chinese football is no longer the golden dream of Brazilian players, but let no one tell Marcos Vinicius Amaral Alves, aka Markão, 28.

Between 2015 and 2019, the last year before the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, clubs in the country’s first division spent 1.43 billion euros on new players (R$ 7.40 billion at the current price).

In the January 2017 transfer market, for example, China moved more than England’s Premier League. There were 388 million euros in reinforcements (R$ 2 billion, in updated figures).

The coronavirus, imposed movement restrictions and club debt burst the local football bubble. Champion in 2020, Jiangsu Suning announced the end of activities the following year with debts of 500 million yuan (BRL 379.5 million, today).

The Chinese government, which owns 23% of the league’s operations and is able to intervene in the national economy to direct investments, even if private, warned that sport was no longer a priority.

“I see that it remains at the same level as before. Athletes with name left, and more unknown ones automatically appeared. [belga Marouane] Fellaini. Because of the pandemic, China closed [as fronteiras]. It became difficult to get in and out of the country”, says the Brazilian striker.

With 16 goals, he is the top scorer of the Chinese Championship and the biggest name of the team that is a local football phenomenon, the Wuhan Three Towns. Tournament leader with 14 wins and a draw in 15 rounds, the team left the third division to reach the elite in three seasons.

Wuhan is the city where the first case of Covid-19 in humans was identified and is considered the birthplace of the pandemic. Not by chance, when Markão told his relatives and friends that he would play for the team and live in the region, the news was not well received.

“Nobody understood. My family didn’t even know that the pandemic had started here. When I told them, they asked what I was going to do, because it was a place that must have a lot of disease… These things”, he said.

For the gunner, this view is due to the lack of reliable information about what life has been like in Wuhan. Because it was the first city to experience the pandemic, it was also the first to come out of it.

“Wuhan was the first place where the pandemic ended. Then it happened with other places. I told everyone that because of that, this is the safest place. When there is one or two cases, they close everything again. we test every two days and you can get it for free. When you walk down the street, there are people on the sidewalk offering tests”, he says.

That’s what happened this week, but not in Wuhan. Because of new cases of Covid-19 identified in other cities, the league organization decided to postpone several matches of the next two rounds, as a preventive measure. The audience in the stadiums has been limited to 5,000 people.

Going to Wuhan was also a sporting challenge for Markão. He arrived at the team when it was playing in the second division. Before, he defended Hebei Fortune, in the elite.

“Since I got here, I still haven’t lost”, he says, also citing the campaign in access last year.

He knows the numbers by heart: 34 games, with 31 wins and three draws. In the period, he scored 31 goals and provided 30 assists. This attachment to numbers comes from a passion that sometimes seems, from the way he talks about it, to be bigger than football: basketball.

The current top scorer went five years without wearing boots as a teenager. He found in the baskets a way to get closer to his parents in Tietê, in the interior of São Paulo. Markão played for his father, the team’s coach in the city, and lived with his mother.

“I took a lot of love for basketball and completely lost contact with football. Everyone said I played well and was a point guard. I wanted to live in the United States because of basketball”, he recalls.

When he turned 16, he was invited to a football friendly match he didn’t want to go to. It didn’t make sense. Toninho Oliveira, the coach, lied. He said it would just be a game against Itu’s opponent and he needed a striker to complete the team.

Markão accepted to help him. The opponent, in fact, was the traditional Ituano. The striker scored three goals and was invited to stay at the club, then managed by Juninho Paulista.

“I had to choose between football, where I saw a way to help my mother financially, and my love of basketball.”

It gave football. At 1.96 m, he is the tallest player in the league in the Asian country, which also gives him an advantage in aerial play.

Markão makes it clear that he has no major concerns. He feels good in Chinese football and in Wuhan, where he receives recognition on the street for the team’s goals and campaign. He doesn’t even pay attention to news published in local newspapers that he could be invited to become naturalized and defend the national team.

He claims to have no plans and is open to any possibility.

For those who dreamed of going to play basketball in the United States, being in China shows the willingness to change their mind, if necessary.

What he takes seriously is his Jordan-branded sneaker collection. Three days before talking to the Sheet, he went out with his private translator to buy a pair. He came home with over 50. Prior to that, he had made another purchase of 85 models.

“I have no idea how many I have. When I go to Brazil, I take at least three suitcases with just sneakers. My old room at my mother’s house turned into a closet just to store them,” he explains.

When he returns to Tietê, he doesn’t do like the other football players in the country who work abroad and spend their holidays between a friendly and a soccer match with their friends. Markão only plays basketball. Something he cannot do in Wuhan.

“People here are grateful for what we’re doing. Many follow closely because before the city was talked about only because of the pandemic.”