Roberto Firmino's forgotten Brazilian spell

A dentist's discovery

Firmino's professional story did not begin in the Bundesliga or at Anfield. It began at Figueirense, the Florianópolis club he joined in 2008 at 17, after starting out at CRB in his hometown of Maceió. He was spotted by a dentist, Marcellus Portella, who brought him into the Figueirense setup. Far from the free-roaming forward English fans would later come to know, Firmino was deployed mainly as a defensive midfielder - a position that would have seemed unthinkable to anyone watching him drift between the lines for Liverpool a decade later.

A debut in the second tier

Firmino made his first-team debut on 24 October 2009, coming on as a half-time substitute in a 2-1 home defeat to Ponte Preta in Série B, Brazil's second division. It was an unremarkable start to a career that would eventually include a Champions League final appearance for Liverpool. His first senior goal followed the next May, the winner in an away victory over São Caetano.

Thirty-six games, eight goals, and a promotion

Over that 2009-10 season, Firmino made 36 appearances and scored eight goals for Figueirense, contributing to the club's return to Série A after a two-year absence from Brazil's top flight. It was solid, unspectacular work from a young midfielder still finding his best position, not the kind of season that gets replayed in highlight reels. Yet it was enough to catch the eye of European scouts: in December 2010, Hoffenheim signed him, and he formally arrived in Germany on 1 January 2011.

Why it's forgotten

Everything that made Firmino a household name happened afterwards - the Bundesliga breakthrough at Hoffenheim, the false-nine reinvention under Klopp, the Fab Four, the Champions League and Premier League titles, the mural on a Liverpool wall. Against that backdrop, a year and a bit in Brazil's second division as a defensive-minded midfielder is easy to overlook, a footnote squeezed between his youth career and his move to Europe. But it was there, at Figueirense, that Firmino first proved himself as a professional and first got paid to do the thing he would later do so distinctively for one of Europe's biggest clubs.

The shape of a career

It is a reminder that even players who become defined by a single iconic role - Firmino's press-resistant, link-up-playing false nine at Liverpool - often started somewhere far removed from it. The teenager who tracked back as a defensive midfielder for a promotion-chasing Brazilian club would, within a decade, be hailed by Thierry Henry as the most complete striker in the Premier League. The Figueirense spell was brief and modest in output, but it was the foundation everything else was built on.