Few players have had such a diverse and successful career as Danilo. During 13 years in Europe he won league titles in every country he played in – Portugal, Spain, England and Italy – and is now back in Brazil with Flamengo, chasing more trophies and a place in Brazil’s 2026 World Cup squad.
The 33-year-old stands out off the pitch too, quitting social media twice for a sustained period over its toxicity, looking back at his younger self wondering why he bought a car that he used once a year and wanting to study psychology when he finishes his playing career rather than pursuing a job in coaching.
Danilo is engaging company for more than two hours and has many stories to tell, starting with the Manchester City manager, the man who changed his life. “Pep Guardiola educates his players,” the right-back says. “That’s the most important thing about his work. He makes all players think about football in the same way. Time, space, movement, possession, taking care of the ball.”
“He makes you understand the spaces on the pitch like no other coach and he lives the game emotionally like no other coach,” Danilo continues. “I was brainwashed by Guardiola, but in a good way. It was like I was at university. What I experienced with him allowed me to raise my level and keep that level to this day. It’s not that I was an idiot before I arrived at Manchester City but I realised that I played football in completely the wrong way. If I had met him before, he would have made my life a lot easier. I’m so glad I was able to play under him and was able to learn from him.”
Danilo’s comments are a reminder of how influential Guardiola can be, even for players who are some way into their careers. It was not as if Danilo was a novice when he arrived at the Etihad in the summer of 2017. He had already played for Santos in Brazil, Porto in Portugal and Real Madrid in Spain, where he collected two Champions League titles under Zinedine Zidane.
He spent two seasons at City, winning the league in both and making 60 appearances. In 2017-18 City amassed 100 points and finished 19 above second-placed Manchester United. The following season was much closer with Liverpool pushing City all the way, ending up one point behind.
Kevin De Bruyne, John Stones, Ederson, Bernardo Silva, Ilkay Gündogan and Phil Foden are some of the players still at the club from that era but Danilo is not surprised that levels had to drop at some point. “We have to remember that football is cyclical,” he says. “There are a lot of players who are now 33, 34 years old and have been at the top of their game for eight, nine, 10 years. This drop in performance is natural. You have to look at the mental aspect as well. When I talk about age, it’s not even physical. It’s the experience of being under so much pressure for so many years, the pressure of winning and winning all the time.
“When you lose, the feeling is that everything has gone wrong and you feel less valuable, incapable. It’s difficult to balance these feelings. That’s why when you win, you only feel relief. However, with age comes a better understanding and it is easier to reflect on some of the defeats and victories.”
The defender’s personal journey has been interesting too and it is clear Danilo does not want to carry on playing until he is 40. He wants to enjoy his life outside football, something he learned during his time in Europe. He is also pleased that he has matured into a different person to the one in his early 20s. “My main thing was to understand who I really am,” he says. “Not following the tide, not following the herd so to speak, you know? I don’t have to think like everyone else, I’m not obliged to live like everyone else. I don’t have to dress like everyone else, I don’t have to talk about the same things that everyone else talks about”.
“When I played for Porto, for example, I came to Brazil once a year. I bought a car, a Camaro, which cost 500,000 reals [£68,000]. Well, the car was in Bicas [the small town where Danilo was born]. What was I going to do with a Camaro in Bicas? There’s a lot of social pressure to have a nice car because you’re a footballer and all that. But this is something that I look at myself from 10 years ago and I say: ‘Really? You’re joking, right?’”
Bicas is a town of fewer than 15,000 inhabitants. Danilo left home at the age of 15 to play for América Mineiro and Santos until he moved to Porto in 2012. In Europe he faced a series of challenges in order to understand himself better. Social media played a part in that and Danilo has come to realise that players could communicate better with fans. Despite being very active on Instagram at the moment, with more than 1,700 posts and 3.6 million followers, he knows the pitfalls and the need not to be held hostage by all the criticism and anger on the different platforms.
“As much as we say we don’t care about these things we are human beings after all. You can’t help but feel it. I’m not addicted to social media, I’m not a very attached guy. But we want to be accepted by people, we want to receive positive feedback. Nobody wants negative feedback. No matter how much you study, how much you worry about your mental health, how mature you are, you want to be accepted. And social media is a toxic environment. Toxic on all levels”
Mental health is a topic close to Danilo’s heart, especially after the problems he faced at Real Madrid between 2015 and 2017. At the time he felt bad and that he wasn’t matching the investment the Spanish team had made in him.
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“Real Madrid was the height of this problem because it’s the biggest club in the world,” he says. “I suffered a lot to the point of seeking psychological help. There were times when it seemed like I couldn’t remember how to play football any more. The criticism was really hurting me. I was a complete hostage to criticism, to social media, to everything. That’s when I started working with a sports psychologist.”
The person responsible for recommending a psychologist to Danilo was Lucas Silva, a Brazilian midfielder who had an unsuccessful spell at Real Madrid. It was the first time that Danilo had had access to professional help in that area and he wishes clubs would help players more in that aspect.
“I’m going to put it very bluntly: the clubs will only do something when they realise the financial damage they are being hit by. Look how many players who were stars at youth level and who didn’t make it into the professional game because of this avalanche of criticism. When you come up, there’s a lot of money, women and fame. But how to deal with it? We all know someone who has lost their way in football. When clubs realise how many players they’re losing due to emotional and psychological problems, they’ll think twice and start investing because that’s technical and financial value for the team.
“And that’s nasty because they don’t care about the human being. We need to humanise football more. People still ignore it, they don’t like to talk about it. But when it comes to the financial side, they care.”
In an attempt to make sport more humane, Danilo created the “Voz Futura” project in 2020. The Brazilian wants to encourage more people to discuss mental health and to look after themselves better.
“Voz Futura is a project that was born during the pandemic, at a time when I felt very influenced by the traditional media, you know? There’s so much negative news. It was a very difficult time for everyone. I was in Italy, which was badly affected. People in Brazil still hadn’t realised the magnitude of things. And every day I opened the main websites and newspapers, as I always do, and I would always feel something very negative. I still didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do but I wanted it to be something important and different to traditional media. We have many people with incredible lives who can inspire and motivate us.”
Voz Futura is one of several projects outside football for Danilo but that does not mean he is done on the pitch. He still has a lot to contribute to Flamengo, who are preparing for the Club World Cup, and potentially for the national team, and he thinks the move back to his home country may help him achieve that. “That’s one of my goals, to get closer to the Brazilian people, to the fans. This can help me and also enhance my role in the Brazilian national team,” he says.
At Flamengo, Danilo is managed by Filipe Luís, the former Chelsea and Atlético Madrid defender, who is only six years his senior. “Filipe stopped playing in December and in February he was already coaching Flamengo’s under-17s. I rang him and said: ‘You’re mad.’ He said he didn’t know coaches worked so hard. That’s why I’ll never be a coach.”
No chance? “Zero. None. I think football still has a lot to give me but when I finish, I need to turn over a new leaf in my life. I want to start university, I want to study psychology, I want to study communications. Life is unpredictable and I’ve learned to allow myself to change my mind but today my answer about being a coach is that it’s impossible.”
Source: theguardian.com
