They called it “the project”, and what it lacked in branding panache, it more than made up for in ambition.



Gabriel Martinelli was just 14 years old and looked younger. He was pint-sized and slender, a “butterfly fillet”, to borrow the charming Portuguese phrase. He had already walked an atypical path, swapping the bright lights of the Corinthians academy for Brazil’s bush leagues midway through his development.



He was a small fish in a small pond — not, on the face of it, an obvious candidate for the big time.



Yet he and his entourage (his father, Joao, and his two agents) had their sights set high.



“I’m going to play in Europe,” the teenager would tell anyone who would listen, and while that dream hardly marked him out as unique, the relentless, strategic pursuit of it did.



Ituano FC, a modest club in the state of Sao Paulo, was to be just the first stepping stone.



In the first...