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MANCHESTER United’s new £7,5million forward Bebe flew from England to Lisbon with his Old Trafford team-mate Nani last week, following his first call-up to the Portugal Under 21 squad.
Nani continued his journey north to meet up with his country’s full squad near Porto.
Bebe, however, took a taxi to the remote southern village of Santo Antao do Tojal and spent the night at the homeless shelter that was his home until just two months ago. Bebe, a man of 20, wanted to sleep among his friends at the Casa do Gaiato for one last time before his life changed forever.
“He came and had lunch here with me and my wife and children,” the shelter’s director, Jose Joao, told Sportsmail this week. “He shook hands with every single person here. He thanked them.
“He spent the night here and the next morning someone from the Football Federation picked him up. I think he wanted to say goodbye properly. He lived here with us for eight years. He knows that without this place he would have been just another lost kid.”
Owned and funded by the Catholic Church for 62 years, Casa do Gaiato sits in generous, if rudimentary, grounds some 20 kilometres outside Lisbon. It is currently home to 80 young males between the ages of four and 25. It is here that Bebe learned to read and write. Here, on a dusty pitch, that he learned to play football. Others from the shelter have made good, too.
“We’ve had teachers, lawyers and businessmen emerge from here,’ smiled Joao.
“We even had an actor. But this is the first one like Bebe.”
Bebe’s journey from the third division of Portuguese football to the Barclays Premier League is one of the more remarkable sporting stories of recent years. Just as inspiring is the fact that he reached adulthood at all.
Abandoned as a young child by his father Francisco and his mother Deolinda, Bebe — christened Tiago Manuel Dias Correia was being raised by his grandmother in a rough Lisbon suburb when a court order delivered him into the care of the church at the age of 12.
Joao explained: “He was in danger. Kids in that area were locked into street life. Bebe was about to enter oblivion. He came here and had virtually no schooling. But we have looked after him and raised him and now football has made him a man.
“At the end of last season when Guimaraes (of Portugal’s Premier League) signed him he told me he did not want to go, to leave the shelter.
“I told him he had to go, that he had to make something of his life. Bebe cried and said: “You are trying to get rid of me”. But I told him it was time to go, that it was time for his life to begin for real.
“Even in the summer, when he was at a pre-season training camp with Guimaraes, he would come here to sleep if he had a day off. It was 200 km away but he came anyway.”
Given his background and his obvious dependency on his friends and mentors at the shelter, it is tempting to wonder just how Bebe will cope in Manchester. There will be no comforting trips “home”. His private bedroom (at one end of a 15-bed dormitory) was given to him a year ago as a sign of his seniority. Now, it belongs to somebody else.
“There are concerns but we feel he is going to the right club,” Joao said.
“In Manchester he will be OK. We think his grandmother may travel there to be with him. We hope so.
“We have heard about Sir Alex Ferguson. He is a leader and that is what Bebe needs. He is tall and strong now but he is just a kid. He needs to be loved.”
Bebe’s grandmother, Ilda Romana, has attempted to provide some stability over the course of his difficult young life. He has “senhorinha” (little lady) tattooed on his arm. His mother lives in northern Portugal and has never been to see him play. His father has disappeared.
Recommended to the amateur club Loures, local to the shelter, four years ago, Bebe played there for two years before a 16 000 euros move to Estrela da Amadora in downtown Lisbon.. — Dailymail.
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