From Grace to Grass: meet a one-time football star, Adriano, whose career went down

No one knows tomorrow, everything maybe falling in place at the moment but it may end up crushing to dust the very next moment, so life's uncertainty is very certain.

This is the grace to Grass story of a one-time football star, Adriano Leite Ribeiro. Adriano was born on the 17th of February, 1982 in Rio de Janiero. At an early age, he showed profound interest in football and literally grew up playing football. His passion for the sport and excellent performances earned him a spot in Flamengo in 1999, young Adriano was officially signed into it's youth squad.

He performed for the first time in the Senior squad in the year 2000 and had his first goal just few days later into the competition. A year later, Adriano caught the attention of Inter Milan through his impressive performances with Flamengo. This boosted his career and he was transferred at a value of €9.75 million. He was later loaned to Florentina and then moved to Parma where he performed impressively again. He scored 17 good goals in 31 matches played.

Later he was returned to Inter Milan with a value of €23.4 million where he scored 42 goals in all competitions for the club and the country. Adriano proceeded to win league titles that were upto 4. His performances took him as far as the Brazil National team and there, he took the place of Ronaldo as the top striker in Copa America, 2004 and Confederation cup, 2005. Adriano was won the Golden boot award in the competition.

One is still unable on point out what brought about the decline in this football star's career but one thing stood out, his recurring night habit. He personally revealed that Ronaldo de Lima pointed him in the right direction at Inter Milan. He said Ronaldo advised him to stop spending his nights with women in hotels.

However another thing that really weakened him was the departure of his father. After his father's death, he sunk back into his habits and started to skip trainings. His teammates had attempted to advise him out of his decline in club activities and his incessant drinking, but it wasn't working. 

Talking about his father's death, he said "Only I know how much I suffered". He said his father's death left a big hole that cannot be refilled. He isolated himself and became depressed and took to drinking. He said drinking was his only source of happiness and he drank anything and everything that was in front of him. It got an extent that he goes to training drunk, he increased in weight tremendously and this will of course lead to bad performances which brought down his career drastically. He's seen living in slums in Rio and relying on a gang for support and protection.

Although there are some reports that Adriano is trying to make a comeback to the football pitch once again. As much as his fall is a thing that wasn't pleasing, I believe his fans would still remembers him as a great football icon.