Bruno Fernandes is said to have had his ex-lover murdered. Now he's playing soccer again
Photo:DOUGLAS MAGNO / AFP
Somehow Valdemar Neto must have become queasy after all. After the shitstorm that broke into his small professional club from the 4th division in view of the signing of a new, highly controversial goalkeeper, Neto spoke up on YouTube at the end of July. He tried to justify what many people in Brazil consider inexcusable: "I would never have thought that the signing of goalkeeper Bruno would have such a resonance in the social networks," said the president of Rio Branco FC from the Amazon state Acre.
Neto should have known better. Because the experience that hiring Bruno Fernandes De Souza is a tactless affair was made by the presidents of three other lower-class clubs before Neto. Wherever the former top goalkeeper from the first division club Flamengo Rio de Janeiro and convicted women murderers was hired as outdoor prisoners in recent years, there was resistance from women's and human rights organizations, soccer players and sponsors, some of whom ended their engagements in protest.
Also now in Rio Branco. No sooner had the ink dried under the contract for "Goleiro Bruno", as Fernandes is known, when the coach of the club's women's teams resigned. Immediately after the obligation was announced, Rose Costa asked to be released from her contractual obligations. She accused club boss Neto of a "lonely decision" because he had not previously discussed such a controversial person with the club's committees and teams. "How can someone set an example for the next generation or athlete who has committed such a barbaric crime", Costa criticizes the contract for the keeper.
Days earlier, when news broke that Fernandes De Souza was hiring in Rio Branco, near the Peruvian border, club boss Neto had described the coup as "one of the best in the club's history".
Murder of the son's mother
So when he says now that he did not expect such a wave of protests, it does not seem credible and cynical. "Bruno paid for what he did, he needs a new chance, he has to feed his family and find his place in society again," said the club boss, looking like a mixture of social worker and preacher. "Whoever is without sin among you, throw the first stone," he concluded.
A crime like the one that the now 35-year-old professional committed ten years ago, according to the judiciary, is not so easy to dismiss. Fernandes is said to have had the mother of his son Bruninho kidnapped, tortured, dismembered and ultimately fed to a dog by a contract killer. The motive: He did not want the pregnancy and neither did he want to pay child support after the birth. Because the keeper only had an extramarital affair with the victim, the model Eliza Samudio.
In 2013, Bruno was sentenced to 22 years and three months in prison, but only served six years and seven months of that because the judiciary delayed the appeal process. Therefore, he was released on short notice for the first time in 2017, hired Boa Esporte Clube in the second division of his home state Minas Gerais, made five games. After a month, the return to the football field was over. Fernandes had to go back to the bars.
"What happened happened"
Because there was still no appeal procedure, Bruno finally got out of custody in 2019 and has since been allowed to do his old job under house arrest with judicial permission: catching balls. At the end of July 2019 he was signed by Poços de Caldas from Minas Gerais. And now Rio Branco from the fourth division. The goalkeeper had already symbolically accepted an offer from the small club Montes Claro in 2014 when he had barely a few months in prison.
What was planned as a supposed PR coup has a particularly bland aftertaste in Brazil. In the country where more women die from femicides than in many other Latin American countries. Many Brazilians fail to understand that the athlete was jailed for so long for a crime that he never fully admitted to. Bruno said in 2017 that he should have "prevented" the death of his lover. "What happened, happened, I made a serious mistake, but it happens in life. People have tried to bury my dream. But I'm starting again."
Football expert and columnist Breiller Pires had the opportunity to interview Fernandes while in custody in 2014. He saw a man who spoke without remorse about the death of his former lover. Pires therefore considers the behavior of clubs like Rio Branco to be "scandalous and hypocritical". Club boss Neto is not about rehabilitation, but about image and marketing. "The clubs confuse rehabilitation with cynicism," Pires told SPIEGEL. None of the four clubs that have wanted to sign the goalkeeper so far would have had a re-integration concept. "Instead, they pretend they've signed Neymar or a pop star."
After all, Bruno Fernandes was part of the wider national team until the crime, had chances of participating in the 2010 World Cup and aroused the interest of AC Milan. Then he became a woman murderer. It is therefore also a story of Brazilian football, where morality and decency take a back seat to attention and spotlight.
In Corona times, Bruno only has training on the program at Rio Branco, and there is therefore a lot of time for mud battles that are fought in the tabloids. Allegedly, the now ten-year-old son Bruninho doesn't want to see his father on the football field, but in jail for life. The keeper, on the other hand, challenges the boy's paternity. Meanwhile, the Acre public prosecutor's office has already requested that "Goleiro Bruno" wear an ankle cuff. Even with the games.
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