From a lost land in the Brazilian Northeast to the lawn of the Parc des Princes. Iran Ferreira is certainly not the most talented footballer in Brazil, but he is undoubtedly the one who knows the most dazzling popularity. Only a few months after having posted himself aping stars like Neymar or Zlatan on the dented ground of his small village of Tabua, the kid from the province of Bahia was invited this week by PSG to redo “his special” on the lawn of the Parc des Princes.
Nothing exceptional, except that the reel (mini-video) of this wrapped free kick that he used to lodge in the middle of the skylight says it all about the phenomenon he has become. In the space of two hours, the video posted on the PSG Instagram account has been viewed more than the announcement of Kylian Mbappé’s extension on the roof of the Parc des Princes (8.2 million). It also had more views than Di Maria’s farewell (8.6 million) in six days.
With her soon to be 14 million subscribers on Instagram, her almost 15 million followers on TikTok, the story of Luva de Pedreiro, “her stage name”, is almost a fairy tale. Son of a peasant, working in the fields alongside his father since the age of 7, Iran Ferreira was not promised a future as a star of the networks or the rest.
His first videos on his clay court, his slender physique and his unacademic style even earned him to be mocked, promised to failure by all the haters who abound on the web. But little by little stars of Brazilian football like Neymar, Richarlison, Marcelo, Vinicius or Rodrygo begin to interact with him and even recreate his celebrations. It doesn’t take much for his videos to go viral and explode the counters.
Received like a king in Europe
From the height of his 20 years, Iran Ferreira will probably never become a professional footballer as he expected. But “Luva de Pedreiro” (mason’s gloves) has found, thanks to its lozenges, the best way to achieve its dreams. For the first time in his life, he attended a football match in Vasco de Gamma stadium last month.
The first times are linked for the one who owes his nickname to the gloves he put on to imitate the European stars, gloved on the ground in winter. Never mind that the only ones he was able to buy in his village were mason’s gloves. These are perhaps the ones that allowed him to swallow the first pizza of his life, to take the plane for the first time and to tread the lawn of the Parc des Princes in recent days. Saturday evening, he will attend the Champions League final in the box, Sunday he will be at Roland-Garros. Ephemeral or not, this is undoubtedly what a 2.0 fairy tale is.