During four of Arsenal’s nine matches in December, a little corner of the internet suddenly filled with the misty-eyed laments of a group of football fans in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, some 6,000 miles away from the Emirates Stadium.
The supporters in question were not frustrated with Mikel Arteta’s tactics, nor were they nostalgic for Arsène Wenger’s trophy-winning teams of the nineties and noughties. In fact, they were not really interested in Arsenal at all.
Instead, the laments were from fans of Flamengo, pining like abandoned lovers over a player they had had all too briefly and lost all too soon.
“Pablo Marí playing, scoring a goal, how I miss this beautiful man”, tweeted one Flamengo fan as Arsenal beat Rapid Wien at the beginning of the month. “There’s not a Flamengo game when I don’t think, ‘oh, how I miss Pablo Marí’”, wrote another. More joined the chorus: “Just seeing Pablo Marí on Twitter makes me want to cry”; “Tears fall from my face”; “I’m going to become depressed”.
Similar outpourings of heartache were seen as Marí followed up that goal against Rapid Wien with a solid performance against Dundalk seven days later and his first two Premier League starts of the season in Arsenal’s recent wins over Chelsea and Brighton.
Seeing such reactions, you would be forgiven for thinking that, prior to his move to Arsenal in January 2020, Marí had spent his whole career at Flamengo, forging a glowing reputation through years of toil and dedicated service.
Yet Marí arrived at Flamengo in July 2019 and spent just 202 days at the club before leaving for north London. That he is still so revered, so frequently discussed and so sorely missed, then, is quite remarkable.
But as Marcello Neves, who reports on Flamengo for the Rio de Janeiro broadsheet O Globo, tells i, “Marí is an idol of the Flamengo fans because of the role he had in their triumphs.” And they were some triumphs. In Mari’s six and a half months in Rio, Flamengo, playing wonderful attacking football, stormed to their first Brazilian title in over a decade and their first Copa Libertadores since 1981.
Marí arrived in Brazil a complete unknown at the behest of then Flamengo manager Jorge Jesus. Jesus had seen Marí play for Deportivo La Coruña, on loan from Manchester City, in the Spanish second tier and knowing that a high-class, left-sided centre-half capable of playing in a high defensive line was needed as the final piece to complete a stellar team, he insisted that the club bring the Spaniard to Brazil.
City signed Marí as a 22-year-old in 2016, but he never played a game in England, loaned out to Girona in Spain and NAC Breda in the Netherlands before his season at Deportivo. When Flamengo came calling, then, it was an opportunity to show what he could do at a big club with serious ambitions.
Marí has adapted quickly
Still, the move was a risk. It is rare for Europeans to play in the Brazilian league and rarer still to see them playing for one of the nation’s biggest clubs during the prime years of their career, so there were questions about how he would settle. But the gamble paid off.
“He adapted quickly to the team and, alongside Rodrigo Caio, resolved the defensive problems in a sector [of the team] that was heavily criticized,” says Neves.
Rodrigo Caio, a Brazil international who Flamengo had signed earlier in the year, agrees with Neves’ analysis. “To be honest,” Rodrigo Caio tells i, “his adaptation was so natural that there wasn’t even that [culture] shock of him being foreign.
“There was always a good dialogue and he was always trying to improve. I can’t emphasise his professionalism enough. He always had a great desire to win and to develop his game.”
Following Marí’s arrival, Rodrigo Caio continues, “we gained a lot in aerial duels and in short and long passing, which are his greatest qualities. Jesus’ tactics demanded a lot of us in working the ball out from the back, so him being left-footed, allied with that good passing, helped us build our play; it created options to go down both sides of the pitch.”
With David Luiz and Gabriel Magalhães self-isolating, Arsenal fans are now getting the chance to see those qualities first-hand.
Fully recovered from the injury that kept him out from June until the beginning of December, the Spaniard has started the last two matches, in which Arsenal have finally got back to winning ways after five defeats and two draws in their previous seven league games.
Marí’s performances have not been entirely blemish-free – he gave away a late penalty against Chelsea that, had Jorginho converted, would have made the final few minutes very tense indeed.
But generally Marí has been solid and assertive in his defending, strong in the air, and accurate in his distribution. Against Brighton he also demonstrated leadership qualities, cajoling his teammates through a difficult period in the first half.
If he can replicate that form against West Brom on Saturday evening, it will not be a foregone conclusion that Gabriel Magalhães or David Luiz regain gain their places when they eventually return to the fold.
Flamengo, meanwhile, continue to struggle without Marí. They have not maintained last season’s scintillating style or form and, according to O Globo journalist Neves, “Since he left, the defensive sector has still not found itself. They are still searching for a substitute.”
Whilst that search continues, Flamengo fans will keep on bellyaching over social media every time Marí plays. As Arsenal are now seeing, Flamengo’s loss is their gain.
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