FIFA World Cup 2014: Hulk overcomes odds to be a star

Fortaleza: Brazil forward Hulk was no darling of fans at home when he started playing for the national team almost five years ago, but the burly player has now become one of its most admired stars because of his performance and demeanor on and off the pitch.

 

Givanildo Vieira de Souza, the player’s real name, got the moniker from his father because of his strength and love for the green-skinned, muscular super hero.

“He used to watch a lot of cartoons. All his things were about Hulk,” Hulk’s father Gilvan Souza said in a local television interview. “One day he comes and says ‘Daddy, look, I’m the Hulk’ and he lifted a gas cylinder. So I said ‘What’s that?’ and the name stuck.”

 

The only boy in a family that had seven children, Hulk grew up in a poor neighborhood in Brazil’s northeastern Paraiba state, working at his family’s stall in a food market selling beef. He left home as a teenager to try his luck at youth teams in Sao Paulo, before transferring to Portuguese second division team Vilanovense at the age of 15 and spending a year there.

His professional football career only started after he returned home, with a short stint at Vitoria in Bahia state before a transfer to Japan when he was 18. 

 

Hulk played for Kawasaki Frontale, Tokyo Verdy and Consadole Sapporo and became the top scorer in the country’s second division, before transferring in 2008 to play for Portugal’s Porto, where he got his big break in international football.

Hulk’s four seasons at the Portuguese team were filled with goals and titles that helped the Brazilian secure a 60 million euro ($82 million) transfer to Russian team Zenit Saint Petersburg in 2012, among the highest-ever fees paid for a Brazilian player.

 

The stellar international career came at a cost, though. Hulk had a tough time initially in Brazil’s team, constantly booed by fans who didn’t recognize him because most of his professional football career was spent overseas at teams in Japan, Portugal and Russia.

“Hulk faced a lot of opposition as a player,” Carlos Alberto Parreira, a former coach for Brazil’s team who is now its technical director, said in an TV interview. “The technical staff had to keep him here (despite) heavy criticism, lots of booing from the fans and, with insurmountable willpower, he overcame all that.”“The fans only really got to know me after the Confederations Cup,” Hulk told local media last month.