A red brick bus station in the small town of Nova Venecia in Brazil has a story to tell.

Backed by a lagoon and an all-you-can-eat cafe for £2, a situation where drunkards drink themselves to death, it marks the start of Richarlison’s journey to the Premier League.

At the age of 17 and frustrated and repeatedly rejected, it was from here that he left home for an 11-hour, 600-kilometer journey to Belo Horizonte, with borrowed boots and no money for a return ticket.

It was 2014. Avai’s and Figueirense’s attempts were fruitless, while his national team was humiliated on home soil in the World Cup. While attracting few people despite being the best scorer playing for Real Noroeste for players under 20 years of age, the young attacker was losing hope.

He attempted a bus trip to the west – a trial with the second-tier team America-MG – his last big chance. He decided not to give up.

“I remember that day,” his childhood friend Pedro Emanuel told BBC Sport.

“He told me he was going, but he had no boots. In fact, he had a pair of black ones but they were broken. I told him: there are pairs here, blue and red that catch the eye. , you should take them.’ I thank God everything worked out.”

He was indeed successful, the test made him play five consecutive seasons in the Premier League with the Watford and Everton clubs. On the international stage, Richarlison is the winner of the Copa America, the winner of the 2020 Olympic gold medal, and the certainty of winning this year’s World Cup in Qatar with Brazil.

But all that would be different.

Richarlison’s parents separated when he was six, so he spent three years living with his father Antonio, working on his grandfather’s farm helping to harvest coffee beans, traveling long distances every weekend to play matches.

By the age of seven, people were telling Antonio to invest in his son because he had a special talent. He responded by buying 10 balls and sending him to live with his aunt in Nova Venecia.

“We were very poor at the time,” Antonio told BBC Sport, wearing the training shirt of Nova Venecia FC, of which he is president and his son is ambassador.

“Childhood was very difficult for him and it was also a difficult time for me because we lived in the countryside and every week we had to ride in the back of a truck to go to football matches. People kept saying he had a future, so when he turned nine I left him and my sister.”

Richarlison supported himself by selling ice cream and chocolate on the street, washing cars, working in restaurants with his uncle Elton, apart from being a bricklayer’s assistant.

Although Antonio admits that his son was not very good at studies, the staff at the Tito dos Santos Neves school in the neighborhood of Rubia describe him as a good-natured boy, with hair dyed yellow like Neymar – the player he admires. The school’s security guard remembers him using the front gate during the day and running straight to the back yard to play football. Teachers remember his humility and good character.

“He didn’t like to study, but he was disciplined,” says Elisangela Monteiro Guidi, who taught Richarlison when he was 11 years old.

“He was always well-behaved; he was not a rebellious boy by any means. He had respect for his teachers and that came from his family, who are good people. Certainly, at that time and in this area, he could have been involved in drugs and violence , but he always managed to avoid it.”

Not always. At the age of 14, Richarlison was held at gunpoint by a local salesman who he believed was trying to encroach on his property. And Antonio remembers when he was called by the school the other day after his son was caught by the police on the street.

“We were worried because the area at that time was dangerous,” Antonio says. “But it was a case of being caught in the middle. Unfortunately, many of his friends went the wrong way.”

Richarlison credits his first youth coach, Fidel Carvalho, a policeman, as another one who helped him avoid a life of crime. “Never give up,” was Carvalho’s motto. He remembers squeezing eight players of the team in the VW Gol to compete in the final outside the city. The future Everton striker traveled in the boots and they returned as champions.

By the age of 16, Richarlison was playing as a youth player with the Real Noroeste club and dominated the team of players under the age of 20, with his strength and speed seeming to be a problem even for those twenty-three years old.

Things did not go well when negotiations with the club saw his 2014 transfer to America-MG close to collapse.

After a long dispute, Real was allowed to retain a certain percentage of his rights, but the club’s position affected the mental health of Antonio, who was already depressed. To this day, Richarlison doesn’t like to talk about that episode.

If leaving Real was difficult, the young man adapted to life in America easily. One of only two boys selected for trials, he joined the under-17s before being fast-tracked by the under-20s following his four goals in his first four games.

American director Euler de Almeida Araujo remembers being impressed by her strength and determination – honed from running up and down the hilly, cobbled streets of Nova Venecia. A few weeks later, he was training with the first team.

“He played in bulk and he would be played very badly but he rarely fell,” says Araujo.

“Defenders would hit him and he would fall. You would think he must be hurt, but he would come back and keep going. He didn’t give up. He was like a young Ronaldo in that sense – that physical strength and determination at such a young age.”

Richarlison’s competition was not only on the field. American massage therapist Silvio Junio Nunes da Silva remembers having to take his young son to work the night before a match.

“Richarlison was playing PlayStation, so my son asked if he could play too,” she says.

“I let them do that, but when I came back, Richarlison had won 11-0. I said: “That’s enough, man.” But he had no mercy. He wanted to keep scoring, keep winning. He was 17, my son was seven. That desire to win it’s in his blood.”

Marcelo Toscano played up front with Richarlison in 2015 when America was promoted to Serie A. He remembers a player with talent, humility – and a big nose.

“I said from the start that he would go far – because of his work ethic, his determination, his talent, and his humility. We scored a lot of goals that season and it’s no accident he’s where he is today.”

Richarlison stayed in America for just one year, scoring nine times in 24 appearances before being sold to Fluminense for R$10m (worth £1.6m today) aged just 18. Yet he left an impression – and not just because they retained 20% of his economic rights, making a breakthrough when he moved to Watford in 2017 for £11.5m.

Talk to anyone at the club and they have a story to share about their famous former teammate and his humble attitude.

For example, when a young player in America receives his first professional salary, club rules dictate that he must leave the college dorms to make room for someone else.

Richarlison, instead of renting a nice house identified by his agent, preferred to continue living with his teammates – and the occasional mouse who visited the bedrooms in the evenings. He withdrew only 20% of his first salary and used the rest to support his family at home.

“He was a normal person, very humble, and a very good person who helped everyone he could,” says Ze Ricardo, an American left back who lived with Richarlison in the dorms.

“Boys who didn’t have boots, he gave them his. He has such a good heart.”

That humility and compassion has remained even as his career shakes.

Antonio adds: “He had a very close relationship with his grandfather – everyone says the same things about them; humble, hardworking people.

“We always taught him to be like that. Even today, I always say that he must not lose those values, he must be tough.

“And he does. Every time he comes to Nova Venecia he helps whoever he can. If it were up to him, he would still be walking around in its streets, playing football with the children in the fields, as he used to do before. Unfortunately, it is more dangerous for him now, so he does more online.”

Few, if any, actors are as outspoken as Richarlison when it comes to social issues. He has helped raise awareness and funding across a wide range of charitable causes including deforestation, Brazil’s rape crisis, the fight against Covid-19 and the importance of voting in this year’s presidential election.

In 2019, shortly after he paid for a group of Brazilian students to fly to Taiwan to compete in an international math quiz, he broke protocol when he received the most prestigious award available to an athlete in his home state of Espirito Santo. Asking for the opportunity to speak, he urged the regional government to invest more in education.

A year later and after organizing a charity match at Nova Venecia which produced 6.4 tonnes of food for those in need, he was named Everton’s PFA Community Champion.

“All of us who play in the big leagues and have a place in the media, we have a big social responsibility,” he told the club’s official website.

“At first, I just wanted to buy a house for my parents, but I saw that I could do bigger things.”

It may not be a trait often associated with Brazilian footballers, but it bodes well for his chances of success in his first World Cup.

“It’s a dream he’s had since he was a kid watching Ronaldo in 2002,” says Antonio, just a short walk from the red brick bus station where it all began.

“During that final, he was just a little boy; now, he is participating in the World Cup

“And, I also told him he will be a top scorer, so let’s wait…”