Trust has always meant everything to Joao Felix. “I always had the ball at my feet,” he once wrote of his childhood in an article for The Players’ Tribune. “Always. Always. Always. And if I was going to pass it to you, well, I had to trust you, right? I mean… that’s my ball, I don’t know what you’re going to do with it. You could just give it away or something, I won’t allow that!
“As I grew as a man, and as a player, I realised that’s what I loved - to have the ball, and to play wonderful, happy football. That’s when I’m at my best, that’s when I am me. But when I played for Porto’s youth teams, that didn’t always happen. They didn’t believe in me as much as I believed in myself. They didn’t trust me on the field. They criticised me for my size. They took me off the pitch, they took away my ball. At Porto, I lost my joy.”
He found it again at Benfica, of course, but it’s only been seen sporadically since. Because the truth of the matter is that very few people still have faith in Felix. Atletico Madrid used to believe in him - a lot. They even paid Benfica €126 million (£113m/$142m) for his services in the summer of 2019. However, at the Metropolitano, they no longer trust Felix; on the contrary, they feel betrayed by him.