November 6 – Kidnap! | On This Football Day

November 6 – Kidnap!

THERE are many rewards for being a top class footballer: fame, money, adulation, the ability to completely ignore any normal standards of good taste and style. But there are also drawbacks: you have to work almost every Saturday, and some evenings as well, you are forced by an obscure by-law to purchase the most oversized car possible (a nightmare for fuel economy), and there is always the possibility that a simple miss-placed pass could result in 40,000 people calling you a wanker.

Still, the sacrifices that footballers in Europe have to deal with are nothing compared to some of their South American counterparts, where extreme poverty and high levels of crime make being a high profile and rich figure a decidedly dangerous proposition.

Today in 2004 the mother of Brazilian superstar Robinho was kidnapped by bandits who then demanded a ransom from the player for her release and ordered him not to play football while they had her.

Marina de Silva Souza, 43, was getting ready for a barbecue with friends in Praia Grande, a working class area 45 miles from Sao Paulo, when gunmen burst into the house and bundled her into the boot of her car while the owners of the house were locked in a bathroom.

At the time Robinho was the latest player being touted as ‘the next Pele’. He had grown up in the same poverty ridden favelas as the Brazilian genius, and played for Pele’s old club Santos. His wonderkid status meant he was one of the country’s brightest young stars and he was being linked with a big money move to a host of European clubs including Chelsea and Real Madrid, where he did eventually move in 2005, citing the problem of kidnapping as one of his motives for leaving Brazil.

The kidnappers sent the 20-year-old player a video of his mother in captivity which showed them cutting off her hair. “I don’t know what sort of people do these things,” Robinho said, “they are people with evil in their hearts.”

After 41 days Robinho agreed to pay a ransom of $75,000 (£43,000) for the release of his mother, and she was returned to him. Police later arrested four people in connection with the crime.

The incident brought to light a massive problem with kidnapping in Brazil and Argentina, and Robinho’s mother was only the first of five footballer’s mothers to be kidnapped in a five month period in Brazil. Two were returned after successful police operations, while three had their ransom paid. The problem was so bad the authorities in Brazil even constructed a specialist wing exclusively for kidnappers to stop them passing on techniques to other prisoners.

The second woman to be targeted was the mother of Sao Paulo striker Grafite. “We thought that when it happened to Robinho it would be an isolated case because he is a big star in Brazil and abroad,” Grafite said.

“Sadly in Brazil, everything that’s bad becomes a fashion. Brazilians are like that. First it was kidnapping businessmen, then their wives and children and now they see an easy target in footballers.”

When he moved to Madrid Robinho moved his entire family over to Spain as well, no doubt anxious to avoid any repeat incidents, but it doesn’t seem to have affected his performances on the field, or his penchant for step overs, as you can see in the clip below.

Have a look here to see what else happened on this football day, and swing by again tomorrow for another footballing tale from the past.