Player Focus: Eduardo da Silva Reinventing Himself at Flamengo

Whisper it quietly, but it is perhaps indicative of the global standing of the Campeonato Brasileiro that players can thrive there long after they hit the proverbial wall in Europe. A fading Ronaldinho? Amazing in Brazil. Kaká, years after his peak? Doing really well, thank you very much. Luís Fabiano, Zé Roberto, Alex and countless others have also found the going easier upon returning home, while even gringos like Clarence Seedorf have made hay in recent years.

The trend is testament to the fact that quickness of thought can compensate for ageing legs, particularly in a league that struggles to produce cerebral, tactically-astute players. A little bit of nous gleaned from European football, allied with technical quality, is usually enough to allow a player to stand out in Brazil.

Most appear to enjoy being the big fish in a small pond. (Robinho, for instance, back for a third spell at Santos, clearly revels in the limelight afforded to him in his homeland.) But the recent form of one man also shows that the Brasileirão can also be a fruitful hunting ground for those who tend to prefer the quiet life.

Eduardo da Silva is in that unfortunate club of footballers who are destined to be remembered more for an injury suffered than for any feats of goalscoring or trophies won. That gut-wrenching leg break, suffered during a match between Arsenal and Birmingham in February 2008, has cast a long shadow over a career that, in another time, in another age, could have gone stratospheric. For countless football fans, Eduardo will always be that player in that photo, preserved forever at his lowest ebb.

But his has been a career of impressive variety. First spotted while playing in Rio's Campeonato de Favelas, he made the daunting move to Dinamo Zagreb while still in his teens, gambling on his ability to adapt to a new culture, climate and language. "When an opportunity like that comes along you have to grab it," he told Placar last month. And grab it he certainly did. After two loan spells, the goals began to flow thick and fast for the Blues: 22 in all competitions in 2005/06, 47 the following season. 

Then came his spell at Arsenal, which came to be defined by the grief of one moment. "My whole life stopped for a year," he says now. "I was still the same player but it scars you." He stuck around in London for a time but a change of scenery always seemed the best bet for his career. Four seasons at Shakhtar Donetsk restored a touch of his lustre and yielded four league titles. 

Still, there has always been a feeling of a career flying at half mast. Take the 2014 World Cup. Where once Eduardo might have been one of Croatia's key players in Brazil, he only managed a cameo off the bench in the group-stage win over Cameroon. It was not the homecoming he might have hoped for.

The World Cup did, however, bring its own benefits, with a number of Série A clubs taking the opportunity to sound Eduardo out about the possibility of a transfer. It was Flamengo who won the day, enlisting 31-year-old in their battle against relegation from the top flight.

These are still early days, but the move has paid off handsomely. In 11 league games (only 6 of which he started), Eduardo has plundered 5 goals, making him the Rubro-Negro's second-top scorer despite only having joined midway through the season. He has also laid on 2 assists – only left-back João Paulo has more. That end product has coincided with the club's best run of the campaign: having languished in the bottom four for weeks, they now find themselves sitting pretty in 12th.

Eduardo remains something of a silent assassin, ghosting into the box to get on the end of crosses and appearing on the scene just in time to apply the finishing touches to moves. He is not one for the showy stuff – 0 successful dribbles and 0.1 accurate crosses per game tell their own story – but few are more ruthless: his goals have come from just 11 shots. Compare that to Alecsandro, whose 7 goals have required 55 shots, and you realise just how clinical Eduardo is. The former Arsenal man has hit the target with 9 of his 11 attempts; his 81.8% shot accuracy is the best of all Brasileirão players to have attempted at least 5 shots this season.

All of which is good news for Flamengo fans, who can hope for even greater things over the coming seasons: Eduardo insists he intends to remain at the club for many years and "came to win titles... to stay at the top." That kind of quiet determination, so characteristic of the man, should continue to serve him and his employers well as he enters the Indian summer of his career.

What do you make of Eduardo's stats and performances this season? Let us know in the comments below