Richarlison: The boy who sold ice cream for a living is now Tottenham’s last line of defence

There is a house in Nova Venecia, a quiet town in southeastern Brazil, that Richarlison built with his first professional wages. His grandmother still lives there.

She once watched 30 people crowd into her living room to see her grandson play a World Cup quarter-final, walked away at half-time because the stress was too much to bear, and later told reporters: “He started from nothing, and look where he is now.”

That sentence, simple, proud, devastating, is the whole story of Richarlison de Andrade in eight words. Right now, with Tottenham Hotspur fighting tooth and nail to stay in the Premier League, that story has never felt more relevant.

Richarlison’s story: Hardship doesn’t leave you, it follows you on the pitch

Richarlison is the eldest of five children, born to a father who worked as a stonemason and a mother who juggled cleaning jobs and selling ice cream. He grew up in a neighbourhood where, as he once put it, “drugs and weapons were everywhere.”

To get by, he sold ice cream from a cart and cleaned cars on the street, working for a local shopkeeper and returning home after dark. Football wasn’t a dream so much as an escape route the only door out of a neighbourhood that swallowed plenty of young men whole.

That background doesn’t fade when you sign a £60m contract. Richarlison donates 10% of his salary to a cancer institute in Barretos and supports 100 families in his hometown, a commitment rooted in personal grief.

That’s because his grandfather died of the disease and his aunt has been receiving treatment for breast cancer. In March 2024, he revealed he had struggled with depression following Brazil’s elimination from the 2022 World Cup, as per The Guardian.

Richarlison even admitted he had considered quitting football altogether and had sought counselling to cope. He spoke publicly about it not for sympathy, but to urge other players to do the same. That, too, is a form of leadership.

Tottenham’s survival and a man who has done this before

This season, Richarlison is on course for his best goalscoring campaign in Tottenham colours, with 10 goals across all competitions. In a season defined by chaos, managerial upheaval, and a squad that has looked destined for the drop, he has been the one constant.

His late equaliser against Liverpool in March gave Tottenham a vital point in the relegation fight, a goal that summed up everything about him: scrappy, willed, absolutely necessary. Crucially, he has been here before.

At Everton in 2021-22, Richarlison scored six goals in the final ten matches to keep the Toffees up almost single-handedly. Former Tottenham goalkeeper Paul Robinson recently said the club would beat the drop if Tudor had “a team full of Richarlisons.”

High praise but also a measure of how threadbare things have become at Spurs. The boy who sold ice cream in Brazilian streets to feed his family is now the man tasked with saving a Premier League club from relegation. If anyone was built for that kind of pressure, it’s him.