Player Focus: Heavyweight Walter Back Among the Goals at Goiás

There is a poem engraved on the Statue of Liberty that sounds out a stirring welcome to immigrants to the USA. “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” reads its most quoted line (and who am I to avoid the beaten path?).

If the Campeonato Brasileiro had its own symbolic gatekeeper, it may utter something similar. “Bring us your teenagers, your aching veterans and your faded stars,” perhaps.

A glance at one of the strikers currently lighting up the league may even prompt them to add another demographic: “Oh, and your overweight too.”

You might remember Walter. As a youngster he caught the eye for Internacional and Brazil’s U20 side, with whom he won the South American Championship. A vintage number nine, he combined reasonable physical prowess with a nose for goal so developed it looked like he’d borrowed it from a sommelier. He was snapped up by Porto, those wily South American truffle hogs.

And then… nothing.

Things didn’t work out at Porto, with Walter finding himself competing for starts with a certain Radamel Falcao. It was a battle he was bound to lose. The Colombian began to establish himself as one of the best strikers in the world; Walter flattered to deceive.

He also began to lose his tussle with a more long-standing nemesis: the weighing scales. Never the thinnest of players, Walter began to pile on the pounds in Portugal, comfort eating after his daughter was born three months premature. “My head wasn’t in the right place,” he told Globo recently. “It was just hospital, training, hospital, training. My performances dipped a lot.”

A loan move to Cruzeiro offered hope of a fresh start but again Walter found it tough to make a mark. When the striker moved to second-division Goiás in June 2012, it was symptomatic of a career apparently in terminal decline – despite the player being just 22 at the time.

But Walter thrived away from the spotlight, firing the Emeralds back to the top flight with 16 goals in Série B. Visibly at home at the Serra Dourada, he renewed his loan deal until the end of 2013 and went on to bag 11 more goals as Goiás romped to the Campeonato Goiano title.

That form has continued into the Brasieirão season. In his last ten starts, Walter has scored 6 goals, all of which have been critical: without his contribution, Goiás would be nine points worse off than they are now – down in the relegation zone, in other words. His positioning and movement have allowed him to fire off 61 shots so far – at least ten more than any other player in the division.

But Walter’s importance to Enderson Moreira’s side goes beyond goalscoring. He is a talisman, creating opportunities for team-mates (no Série A forward has set up more than his 28 chances) and dropping deep to help maintain possession: he has completed 393 passes and managed an impressive 42 accurate long balls so far. He is both number nine and playmaker, spraying the ball around before appearing in the box to arrow powerful shots towards the corner of the net.

You might think, then, that Walter must have shed the pounds. But you would be wrong; the 24-year-old is still endearingly rotund. A couple of months ago he was even heavier than that, prompting Goiás fitness coach Robson Gomes to claim that he the player was in the habit of drinking two litres of soft drink every day.

Walter has denied this but admits he does feel offended by supporters calling him gordinho (fatty). “It irritates me,” he revealed last week. “Imagine you had a daughter and everyone at school called her fat. Let’s see if you like it. No one likes to be called names.”

He does, however, admit that he still needs to work on his diet. “I have to lose four more kilos. I’m progressing towards the target set by the coach, which is important. If I don’t reach it, he’ll stop playing me!”

In truth, there doesn’t seem too much danger of that happening; he remains a player capable of winning matches single-handedly. Goiás need someone like that around. Even if he is a touch on the heavy side.