Endrick is superhuman – his outrageous 2023 goal catalogue has left us speechless
The Brasileiro Serie A season is over and despite Luis Suarez doing his best to fire Gremio to the title, the old man was outdone by the young gun as Endrick’s Palmeiras won the championship.
IPA drinkers and tote bag wearers among us will have been following the Brazilian top flight’s title race with a keen eye, with just four points separating eventual winners Palmeiras from fifth-placed Botafogo, whose bottle job would’ve made Tottenham proud.
In and amongst that epic title race, though, nobody could quite take their eyes off Endrick, despite Suarez doing his absolute best to try and steal the teenager’s thunder and doing a bloody good job of it considering his age.
Lifting the league title in his final full season with the club where the dream came true for the 17-year-old was inevitable.
After agreeing to a €60million move to Real Madrid in December 2022, set to be completed upon turning 18 in the summer of 2024, many wondered if the lofty expectations on Endrick would weigh him down before he’d even got to Europe.
No chance. Instead, he’s spent the year since zapping defenders with his outrageous dribbling and flair and trying his best to take off goalkeepers’ arms with thunderous goals from an array of angles.
We’ve been high on his sheer wizardry for a number of months now, so to see him lift the title at the end of a blockbuster campaign doesn’t feel all that surprising.
Endrick has become the first player to score 10 goals in a Brasileirao season before turning 18 years old since Neymar did so in 2009 and becomes only the third player to do so alongside Neymar and Ronaldo. That is some company.
What makes it all the more special is the eye test. One look at Endrick and it’s abundantly clear to see exactly why he’s held in such a regard and how he’s fired his name to sit among the greats despite not being old enough to buy GTA VI if it was to release today.
All goals scored by @Endrick in 2023. 🇧🇷🌟
— MadridistaTV (@madridistatvYT) December 7, 2023
He ended his 2023 campaign with 14 goals in all competitions for Palmeiras, finishing notably strongly with six goals in his final eight league games to get his side over the line in the title race.
That is outrageously clutch for any player, not least a 17-year-old kid born in 2006. Blimey.
It’s not just the fact he finished so strongly, either. It’s the quality and variety of goals he’s already capable of, with just one season of senior football under his belt.
Diving headers, perfectly-timed poaches inside the box, rounding the keeper like R9 in full tilt and – when he fancies it – a turbocharged golazo with a power you’d think was only able to be generated by nuclear energy.
In simple terms, Endrick is an absolute freak of nature and the more we watch him, the more we’re convinced he’s an alien sent from outer space to complete the beautiful game that is football.
He’s got a long way to go and the heat will be cranked up to maximum when he’s tasked with strutting his stuff inside the cauldron that is the Santiago Bernabeu, but the Brazilian is off to quite literally the dream start and will arrive as a league winner with an absurd CV having just turned 18.
The future is astonishingly bright, for both Endrick and Real Madrid.
By Mitch Wilks
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