Gabriel Barbosa

The first thing anyone in Vila Belmiro noticed about Gabriel Barbosa was how quickly the academy stopped being a place he needed. He joined the youth ranks at eight years old and was already in the first team by 2013, one of the youngest players to break through at Santos in years.

Inter Milan paid 30 million euros for him in 2016, and it never worked. A loan to Benfica did not change the trajectory, and by the time he returned to Brazil the European chapter was closed with little to show for it.

The career that mattered came afterwards. At Flamengo he became one of the most feared forwards in Brazilian football, twice finishing as the league's top scorer, in 2018 and 2019, and in 2019 he was named South America's best player. That same year sits alongside an Olympic gold medal, won in Rio de Janeiro in 2016 with the Brazil squad. At full international level he has made 18 appearances for the national team, scoring five goals.

After Flamengo, the path turned less straightforward: a move to Cruzeiro in 2025, and then, in 2026, a loan back to the club where it all started, Santos. For a player once sold abroad for a club-record fee, the return to Vila Belmiro closes a circle that few could have predicted when he first left as a teenager.