Alexandre Pato comments on why he never won the Ballon d’Or

Most football fans know his story. Alexandre Pato, a player who had huge potential and whose injuries negatively affected a promising career. Was it really just injuries or was it something else? Pato talked about it in an interview with ThePlayersTribune.

“I know what you’re thinking, I’ve been hearing it for 10 years. What happened to Pato? Why did he never win the Ballon d’Or? Why was Pato always injured? I should have answered these questions much earlier. “

Pato joined AC Milan at the age of 18 for €24 million from Brazilian side Internacional. In his very first season he scored 9 goals and added 2 assists, a good feat for a teenager.

Why did Pato choose AC Milan when he could have gone to Barcelona or Real Madrid? One of the reasons was the composition of the team at the time. Kaká, Seedorf, Pirlo, Schevchenko. They were all on the same team on PlayStation and Pato got the opportunity to play with them in reality.

The Brazilian was used to taking the ball and dribbling down the line. Carlo Ancelotti had other plans for him. In one of the first training sessions, he told Pato that he wanted him to play on the tip and move primarily in the midfield. The reward for listening was a legendary moment at Camp Nou when Pato took the ball in the centre circle and ran straight through to the goal. The shot went between Valdes’ legs.

After the Camp Nou game, the media had already started coming out with statements that Pato would be the best in the world and win several Ballon d’Ors. The Brazilian began to enjoy the attention he was getting, he began to dream too much. “When I won the Golden Boy award in 2009, somehow I didn’t think about it, I enjoyed football. I was unstoppable when I was living in reality.”

The injuries started in 2010, and Pato has been battling them ever since. He was always injured, obviously he stopped trusting his body. He was often injured, but he didn’t tell anyone, he didn’t even want to tell anyone because he was afraid of what people would say. Of course, one concealed injury was followed by another and it got to the stage where it was impossible to endure. The Brazilian wanted to please everyone.

“Everyone expected me to score 30 goals a season. The injuries kept coming. I didn’t know anything about them. All I knew was how to play football. Milan had some doctors and doctors, of course, but they had to attend to everyone, not just me. I saw a doctor, then we played against Barcelona and I got injured in the next training session. It was terrible,” says Pato of the worst moments.

The Brazilian never went to parties, although there was a lot written in Italy. The desire, he says, was not lacking. The last straw at AC Milan was when French side PSG wanted him, to which he was not allowed to leave and as a result Carlos Tévez did not go to AC.

All the media and fans blamed the Brazilian for not wanting to leave the club. But none of them knew that Ancelotti didn’t allow him to leave.

After so many muscular injuries Pato went through, the fear came in if he would ever be able to play football again. When he left for Brazil’s Corinthians in 2013, it was for the sake of his interest in playing in the domestic World Cup. Bruno Mazziotti became the striker’s personal physiotherapist and since then the Brazilian has only suffered three muscular injuries.

After his engagement at Corinthians, Pato switched between several clubs, including Chelsea and Villarreal, but nowhere could he build on the form he had at AC Milan. He is currently at Sao Paulo in Brazil alongside James Rodriguez, who transferred there this summer.

The Brazilian has scored 167 goals in his career so far, but it must be added that 63 of them have come at AC Milan.

Source: Transfermarkt, ThePlayersTribune