Former Brazil and Inter Milan star Adriano turns 43 today, with the striker’s career remaining one of the most explosive and ultimately disappointing of recent years following his well-documented off-the-pitch battles.
Adriano began his career in the Flamengo youth set-up before graduating to the first team and getting a move to Europe with Inter in 2001, a year after he made his Brazil debut as an 18-year-old. A loan move at Fiorentina was followed by a prolific spell at Parma, before he returned to Inter in 2004.
On the pitch, Adriano was flying high, netting 28 goals in the 2004/05 campaign and 19 the following season, while on the international front he was seen as the long-term successor to Ronaldo, winning the Golden Boot at both the 2004 Copa America and the 2005 Confederations Cup. FourFourTwo would name him one of the 50 best players of the 2000s in 2023.
Adriano on the battles that plagued his career
But following the death of his father in 2004, Adriano began to be plagued by off-field issues.
“At that time, I only felt happy when I drank,” Adriano said in a 2017 interview. “I could only sleep if I drank. My [Inter] coach, Roberto Mancini, and my teammates noticed that I was hungover when I arrived for training. And if I feared arriving too late, so I didn’t sleep and went training still drunk. I slept in the medical department and Inter had to tell journalists that I had muscular pain.”
Adriano’s Inter teammate Javier Zanetti also discussed the impact that his father’s death had on the striker.
“He kept playing football, scoring goals and pointing to the sky, dedicating them to his father,” the Argentinian icon said in 2016. “But after that phone call, nothing was the same. Ivan Cordoba spent one night with him and said, ‘Adri, you’re a mix of Ronaldo and Zlatan Ibrahimovic. Are you aware that you could become the best player ever?’ But we didn’t ever succeed in pulling him out of depression.”
Adriano returned to Brazil in 2008 for a loan spell with Sao Paulo, before re-joining Flamengo for the 2009-10 season. At the end of that summer he returned to Serie A for one last stint in Europe with Roma, but his three-year contract was terminated after less than a year as he continued to struggle, playing just a handful of games back in Brazil with Corinthians, Flamengo and Atletico Paranaense before his career ended after a six-month stint with Miami United of the National Premier Soccer League in 2016.
“Depression and alcohol have been part of his life since those days,” a childhood friend, who preferred not to be named told FFT. “And now he’s more lonely than ever. His Instagram account may show him surrounded by people all of the time, but he is alone. He is mostly quiet. He lost the joy of playing football long ago.”
Another friend, nicknamed Alemao, told FFT in 2017 that Adriano’s injury-hit time with Corinthians in 2011 was above board... relatively speaking.
“Adriano drank mostly beer – alcohol was more than enough,” he says, rejecting claims that drug-taking was rife at gatherings he attended. “There were all sorts of drinks, women we had never seen before and a sense that he would still be able to deliver great performances once he got back, even though he was clearly overweight and depressed.
‘Sometimes the parties would be in his apartment, but Corinthians kept an eye on what was happening there, so sometimes we went to nightclubs. One morning, the club had arranged for him to have a physiotherapy session at home, but he missed it because we were still out from the night before.”
Adriano would end his 16-year career with 177 goals from 405 club appearances, with the high point being the three Serie A titles he won with Inter. He would also win 48 caps for Brazil, netting 27 times and at his peak he was a powerful, pacey forward with superb technical skills that measured up to the best forwards of his era. But his story will forever be one of struggle and a battle against his inner demons.
