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Igor Thiago had dreams that seemed impossible. His impoverished childhood and the early death of his father forced him to grow up fast while still a teenager. To eat, he had to start working as a child. He was a bricklayer’s assistant, a fruit carrier at the market and a car washer … so many jobs that could have prevented him from becoming the Brazilian to make Premier League history with the most goals in a single season.
Igor Thiago has 16 goals in 21 games for Brentford. There are still 17 more matches to go, the first against Chelsea on Saturday, but he has already surpassed such Brazilian luminaries as Roberto Firmino, Matheus Cunha and Gabriel Martinelli, all of whom scored 15 league goals in their most prolific season. How to describe this turnaround in his life? Igor Thiago has an easy explanation. “I would describe it as a lot of hard work. I think that everything God has planned for my life, has given me this year at Brentford, is something I hadn’t experienced yet in my career,” he says.
As has been the case at many points throughout his life, the beginning of his time at Brentford was marked by difficulties and challenges. Two knee injuries kept him out for much of last season, to the point that he only played eight games in his first campaign.
“I was really upset because I didn’t understand why this was happening to me. I even thought: ‘My God, will I ever be myself again?’ Until this year’s pre-season, I kept thinking: ‘Am I going to come back?’ I felt it a lot. My body had never been through that before.
“But in the end, it was a good thing for me. I also worked on other things. Other weaknesses, too. I had something that was lacking a little, that I might not have had time to work on if I hadn’t had that injury. So I worked harder. That injury taught me a lot.”
The period away from the pitch enabled the forward to get closer to his young family and try to fill a void opened up by the death of his father when he was 13, due to problems with alcohol.
“I learned to really value my family. To look at life differently, to enjoy football, to enjoy being on the pitch. To play with more love, not to think so much about mistakes. I realised that I had to enjoy my life as a footballer more, enjoy every minute on the pitch, not let the little things frustrate me or take me out of the game mentally. I had to enjoy every moment, both the good and the bad, because they are what make you grow.
“I also became a father very young. I had to mature early. So, with the whole period of my father’s loss, life made me understand that I needed to be a man. Being a father is different from having a father. While my father was alive, I had many good memories with him. He was an alcoholic, but he was never an aggressive father. He was always very loving, caring. Because of the loss of my father, I had to grow up mentally. After his death, a lot of things started to be missing. So that pushed me even more to work.”
And things really started to fall short in Igor Thiago’s life. His mother – widowed with four children to care for – worked as a street cleaner in their home city of Cidade Ocidental, near Brasília, and life was tough for Igor Thiago and his siblings.
“I had friends who wanted me to steal with them. They weren’t really friends, of course. They were acquaintances from the street, but they wanted me to use drugs, to follow the wrong path in life.
“Many people in my city live a reality similar to or worse than mine at the time. Many people have alcoholic parents, who use drugs, who were abandoned. But I need to talk about my story. I understand that if I tell my story, I can inspire people around me.”
Rejected by the biggest clubs in Brazil, Igor Thiago ended up in Verê, a city of 7,000 inhabitants. He was top scorer of the regional league, but what took him to Cruzeiro – in Belo Horizonte, the country’s sixth largest city – was a short video presented to the club’s board.
Ricardo Resende, then coach of the under-20s, says: “Our football director, Amarildo, showed me a short video, 30 seconds long, and I liked it. It was beautiful goals, a different profile, he was a very high-quality player. We called him for a trial and in the first training session he made a run that impressed us. There was no way we couldn’t sign him.”
Célio Lúcio, a former Cruzeiro player and general technical assistant for the youth teams, adds: “What impressed me most about Thiago was his potential to learn. I saw Ronaldo starting at Cruzeiro. I was a player at the club and saw his arrival in 1993. Ronaldo was a very persistent, hard-working guy. Thiago is similar to him in that sense. Of course, not the technique because Ronaldo is from another world, but Thiago was a talent that needed to be polished and wanted to learn.
“I showed him the way and he followed it. He used to arrive 20 minutes before the training and stay another 20 minutes on his own after. He is an example to everyone.”
Even with the praise at the club, Igor Thiago did not receive the recognition he deserved. He was sold for about €1m (£860,000) to the Bulgarian champions, Ludogorets, and while it was an important move in the transition to European football, it was to prove another challenging period when he was targeted by racists on social media.
“It was difficult, very difficult time in Bulgaria. I had to adapt to a culture that was totally different from what I was used to in Brazil. I had to live a different life, speak a language that wasn’t mine, I had to learn to endure the cold. I suffered a lot of prejudice, too.
“There was a game where I scored a winning goal. I had never received a message on Instagram in Bulgaria. Suddenly, I started receiving a lot of private messages saying that I was a monkey, that my children were monkeys. It was an embarrassing situation, but I understood that it wasn’t about me. It didn’t say anything about me. It said more about them, frustrated people, people with problems of their own. I moved on in peace. That’s not going to shake me.”
Back-to-back titles in Bulgaria and 21 goals in 55 games attracted the attention of Club Brugge in 2023 before Igor Thiago signed for Brentford in a club record £30m move in February 2024 and he claimed the goals record for a Brazilian in the Premier League after scoring twice in the 3-0 defeat of Sunderland. Without forgetting the past, Igor Thiago is preparing to fulfil a childhood dream: to wear the national team shirt of Brazil.
“This World Cup feeling is very exciting. I’m very hopeful about being part of it, I’ve always dreamed of playing in a World Cup. It’s something I only saw other people experiencing on television, but now I’m close to experiencing it myself.
“God has a purpose in everyone’s life. If it is God’s will and [Carlo] Ancelotti’s will, it will be a pleasure, an honour, to represent my country. It is an indescribable feeling to represent my country, to be able to experience this moment. It will be something I can’t explain. No one from CBF [the Brazilian Football Confederation] has ever contacted me, but I have this expectation.”
Despite the arrival of the former Real Madrid coach Ancelotti in May, Brazil are struggling. One of the team’s weaknesses is the No 9 shirt, a position Igor Thiago says he is ready to take on and bring home the trophy for the first time since 2002.
“I believe I am ready. The only thing I know how to do in my life is score goals. God has prepared me for this moment, and if he allows me, we will bring the sixth World Cup title to Brazil.”
