Carlos Miguel was seven years old when a group of men broke into his family’s house.
It’s unclear why they were there. Nearly two decades later, nobody knows for sure what their intentions were. The best guess is it was a robbery gone badly awry, but we can’t be certain.
Whatever their purpose, it ended in tragedy. Carlos Miguel’s parents, Jose Claudio and Elenise, were murdered by the intruders. He and his older brother, eight years old and also called Jose Claudio, hid in a back room of their house in Macae, up Brazil’s Atlantic coast from Rio de Janeiro.
The police identified some suspects but nothing ever came of the investigation. The case was dropped due to lack of evidence. Nobody has ever been convicted.
Carlos Miguel, left, and his brother Jose Claudio with their father (Photo: Ana Maria)
The boys, the two youngest of four brothers, went to live with their aunts, Ana Maria and Ana Claudia, and grandmother Maria Aparecida, in Cardoso Moreira — still in Rio state, but more than 200 miles (over 300km) away. Carlos Miguel and Jose Claudio Junior were left traumatised, not just by the incident, but by their fear the killers might return. They saw a psychologist when they were young, and eventually, gradually recovered.
“It’s a shame he’s not with us to see his children now,” says Ana Maria of her murdered brother. Then she says of her nephews, “We’ve always been so proud of them because, with God’s help, the psychologists, and ours, they overcame the tragedy.”
Carlos Miguel with his aunts Ana Claudia, far left, Ana Maria, far right, and grandmother Maria Aparecida (Ana Maria)
When Carlos Miguel dos Santos Pereira signed for Nottingham Forest in the summer from Sao Paulo club Corinthians, the most striking thing about him was his height. At 6ft 8in (204cm), he is the tallest player in the Premier League. But when you hear what he had to deal with, ‘being tall’ drops down a couple of places in what is extraordinary about him.
It was almost predestined that he would be a goalkeeper — not just because of his height, but also because his father was one, and a good one, too. He played for Rio-based Botafogo, another of Brazil’s biggest clubs, in the 1970s. His time there was brief: he was their back-up goalkeeper when he was young. Then when he watched his son play, he believed he was destined to be a keeper too.
“Miguel has goalkeeping in his blood,” says Ana Maria. “He is his father’s clone. They are very similar physically, in temperament and in heart too. His father, in the short time they had together, taught him, as he had a strong vision that Miguel would become an excellent goalkeeper. (Jose Claudio Senior) was a good goalkeeper, but had to end his career to work and support the family.”
Jose Claudio Senior during his playing career (Photo: Ana Maria)
Jose Claudio had two daughters from his first marriage, and when it became clear that he might struggle to make steady money from football, he left the game, later becoming an engineer for Petrobras, the Brazilian energy company. He was only 47 when he died.
After suffering such awful trauma at such a young age, a person’s life could take several directions. Carlos Miguel, it seems, has drawn strength from it.
“Miguel has always had a very strong personality,” says his close friend Wesley Paim, who met Carlos Miguel while the goalkeeper was playing for Internacional in the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre. “This is because of all the difficulties he has faced. We mature faster when we go through such challenges at a young age. He learned a lot from these experiences, which made him a strong person.”
Carlos Miguel does not talk about what happened very often, but when he does he is relatively comfortable doing so. At the very least, it seems to have allowed him to put football into some perspective: when you’ve gone through what he has, conceding a goal or having a bad game doesn’t seem quite so serious.
He was brought up in a religious household. Ana Maria describes them as a “devout Roman Catholic family” and Carlos Miguel and his brother Jose Claudio were both altar boys at their church in Cardoso Moreira. Ana Maria says Carlos Miguel was a “mischievous and intelligent child”. During his school days, all he wanted to do was play football, so Ana Maria and Ana Claudia laid down some rules: no training unless he got good grades in class. When he got those grades, his aunts would take him to football training, his father’s hopes for his future clear in their minds.
Carlos Miguel with his brother Jose Claudio (Ana Maria)
“He has a good heart, always ready to help others,” says Ana Maria.
To illustrate that there is a story of his time in Porto Alegre. When the city was flooded this year, a couple of his friends were forced out of their home, so Carlos Miguel let them stay with him.
The idea of an open house comes up in another story. Even when he was living in a smaller apartment, its living room would be routinely full of sleeping friends — essentially, anyone who wanted to stay. Paim remembers how Carlos Miguel bought a ping-pong table for everyone to use: it took up most of that living room but brought everyone together.
Carlos Miguel took a slightly circuitous route from Brazil to the Premier League.
He started at Flamengo, where he played in the youth ranks alongside another talented young player who has since moved to Europe — admittedly, Vinicius Junior’s career has been slightly more high profile so far.
After leaving Flamengo, Carlos Miguel went to Internacional, for whom he excelled in the Copinha, a high-profile Brazilian youth tournament that often introduces some of the brightest talents to a national audience. Vinicius Jr’s now Real Madrid team-mate Endrick, whose goals in the Copinha brought him international attention a couple of years ago, is a recent example.
A couple of unproductive loans followed, before a move to Corinthians in 2021. Initially, he was their fifth-choice goalkeeper, but worked his way up the pecking order and made his debut for the senior team in July 2022.
He was understudy to his idol Cassio, the Corinthians legend who spent more than 10 years at the club, making more than 700 appearances. As long as Cassio was around, Carlos Miguel knew he would not be first choice, so when he signed a new contract after his senior debut he requested a relatively modest release clause. He accepted he would be on the bench, which wasn’t the worst gig in the world if he was also learning from his hero, but he also wanted a straightforward exit route.
Carlos Miguel playing for Corinthians last year (Raul Sifuentes/Getty Images)
This led to him leaving Corinthians under a minor cloud.
When Cassio departed for Cruzeiro at the end of last season, it looked like Carlos Miguel would become their No 1, which he was for a while, but he chose not to renew his contract. That left the release clause open and presented Forest with the opportunity to sign him for just £3.4million ($4.5m), paying a little bit more than the actual release-clause figure as a gesture of goodwill.
This annoyed many Corinthians fans, to the point that requests to the club for someone to talk about his time there for this article were politely turned down because of the prevailing sentiment against him.
Forest were an attractive proposition. They are a Premier League club, of course, and he already knew their other two young Brazilians: Danilo and, particularly, Murillo, with whom he played at Corinthians. Forest also have Portuguese-speaking staff members, including goalkeeping coach Rui Barbosa and head coach Nuno Espirito Santo, himself a former professional goalkeeper.
The people who know Carlos Miguel say he’s initially quite a shy and reserved person, but that once the ice is broken, he’s much more open. He appears to have already got to this stage at Forest with his initiation song, a number called Parado No Bailao by Brazilian rapper MC L da Vinte. “He was fantastic,” team-mate Anthony Elanga told the BBC. “He got everyone dancing, especially me.”
“He’s always cheerful, always happy,” says close friend Paim. “It’s rare to see Miguel feeling down, he’s always lifting the atmosphere around him. He doesn’t have many close friends, but the ones he does have, he’s always helping and joking around with. So, that’s what Miguel is: happiness. Miguel brings joy to those around him.”
Still, at 6ft 8in, you don’t want to get on his bad side, as Sao Paulo’s former West Ham United striker Jonathan Calleri discovered in a bad-tempered game last month. A minor scuffle had broken out before Carlos Miguel, towering over everyone and looking like an adult intervening in a fight between children, steamed in and sent Calleri thumping to the ground with a shove.
Aqui não teve expulsão do Carlos Miguel
Esquema SALVE O CORINTHIANS a todo vapor
pic.twitter.com/IkpqgLkM2T— Bart (@bartpalmeiras) July 2, 2024
He made his Forest debut in the Carabao Cup defeat to Newcastle United, conceding in the first minute but also making a fine stop in the penalty shootout, and he’ll have to work hard to get regular time in the first team. Matz Sels is their current No 1 and, as the transfer window is still open (and knowing Forest!), there’s always a chance another goalkeeper could materialise at the City Ground.
Miguel’s save in the penalty shootout from his compatriot Joelinton (PAUL ELLIS/AFP via Getty Images)
But, given everything the 25-year-old Carlos Miguel has already dealt with in his life, working for a place in the team won’t be too much of a problem.
“His aunts, mothers and his grandmother, we are incredibly proud of you,” says his aunt, Ana Maria. “An excellent grandson, an excellent son, a wonderful nephew to both me and my sister, a fantastic brother, we love you, and we are very, very proud of you.”
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(Top photo: George Wood via Getty Images)