Nene wasn’t exactly a big success during his short spell in the Premier League with West Ham, but having seen the Brazilian at Paris Saint-Germain it’s hard not to wish he’d arrived sooner and stayed longer.
Back in August 2011, Paris Saint-Germain positioned themselves as the next superclub-in-waiting.
Flush with Qatari money, the Ligue 1 title contenders spent more than €75million on a hatful of new signings, including club-record buy Javier Pastore.
There was hope that the new arrivals would help the club bludgeon their way to a first domestic title since 1994, but instead an unheralded Montpelier side lifted the title, inspired by Younes Belhanda, Olivier Giroud and, oddly, John Utaka, with Antoine Kombouare dismissed and replaced mid-season at PSG by Carlo Ancelotti.
The goalscoring charts didn’t exactly pan out as expected, either. Pastore may have delivered, recording the best goals tally of his PSG career to date, but fellow attacking recruits fell short of one man about whom much less of a fuss was made.
Nene had top-scored for PSG in his first season, 2010-11, but many expected him to be sidelined by the new arrivals.
Certainly, few would have predicted him to lead the title challenge with 21 league goals including several braces and a hat-trick in a 3-0 win over Rennes.
Watching Nene play, you wouldn’t expect him to be known for his stats, and it almost feels accidental that he found the net so frequently during his time in Paris.
He was a proper Brazilian No.10, possessing a left foot that redefined the word ‘deft’. Watching him play in Paris was like watching Alvaro Recoba borrowing Diego Forlan’s magic goalscoring boots.
Already the wrong side of 30 by the time he left Paris in 2013, Nene almost vanished as quickly as he emerged.
In one sense, his heroics of the prior season mean it feels like a travesty that his two Champions League starts in the 2012-13 campaign were the only ones of his career, but one might counter that by pointing out he showed little before moving to Paris to suggest he would even achieve that much.
Move to West Ham
If anything, his style of play is more along the lines of ‘former young talent snapped up by Sam Allardyce after seeing his career stall in the Middle East’. Which, now that I mention it…
Nene was snapped up by Allardyce during the future England boss’ final season at West Ham, after a spell with Qatari club Al-Gharafa which is best remembered for what can only really be…
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