‘Ronaldinho is not just my idol – he texts me advice sometimes’

Matheus Cunha is a person of big emotions, and his journey has involved learning to control them. But he can’t stop the rush of feelings when a certain name pops up on his phone: Ronaldinho. Cunha get flooded with happiness — and nerves.
Ronaldinho is his ultimate hero — “I see him always as the map of how to play” — and yet, somehow, as his own career progressed he found himself getting to know the great man. Ronaldinho gives him advice and every so often sends him a text. “I won’t say we’re friends — that’s too big a word when you talk about your idol — but he is an unbelievably good guy and when I take out my phone and see something from Ronaldinho I start to be nervous . . . I say, ‘This is my idol and I know him!’ ” the Wolverhampton Wanderers forward says with a grin.
If there’s one lesson he takes from Ronaldinho it is “always when I go to the pitch, even if I have a lot of pressure, it is to remember this is my dream. And then I only want to be here to smile and do the things that God gives me.”
Cunha does little else but smile for most of an hour of conversation but then it gets serious and I find myself thinking that if he can struggle, anyone can. His whole life has been rooted in joy: loving family, comfortable childhood, the gift of talent and a relationship with football shaped by the self-expression learned on the futsal pitch. And yet, 18 months ago, he didn’t want to get off his sofa, and couldn’t see the point of his career, and found himself staring up the steep, dark walls of depression in hope of seeing some light.
Early in 2022, everything felt nicely on course. Having begun his senior career in Europe after moving from Cortiba to Sion at 18, he had worked his way from Swiss football to the Bundesliga to Atletico Madrid and excelled for Brazil at Under-23 level, scoring 21 times in 24 games and winning a gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics, where he scored in the final. He had broken into the Seleção and been first choice in their World Cup qualifying campaign. He looked likely to go to the finals in Qatar. Everyone said it, and that was part of his trouble.
“I was in Atletico and it was this need to be in the World Cup. You have a lot of pressure outside you. The media, fans, everyone pushes you to be the guy they think you are. And then you put inside of you all these things.”
Yet he got injured, lost a little form, felt more and more pressure and then came the day Brazil’s then coach, Tite, named his 26-man squad for the finals. It contained nine forwards but not him. “Two days or maybe one day after, I knew I needed help. The six months before were to forget, because I felt like I needed to do everything perfect to be, you know, like this guy, then go to the World Cup — and then after [I] don’t want to do nothing more for football. You understand?
“I want to run away and maybe be in João Pessoa [his home city], in Iceland, maybe in Maldives, I don’t know. And after I wasn’t called up I saw my family like down and felt I don’t have power, like the normal power that I have to help them and make them happy.”
He lay on his couch, sometimes checking his phone and quickly putting it away. “You touch your social media and continue to be down because the people there don’t have hearts,” he says. It took a while to have a “click in the head” and realise he needed to do something and go to see a psychologist.
Counselling sorted him out — and he continues to have sessions from time to time. “I found the psychologist myself. I don’t think football is prepared [to fully deal with mental health]. We are very young and you get a lot of money and of course people still look at you like you are one of the superheroes.
“They don’t think you are human and then have different emotions. But I think there are a lot of examples [in sport] — Simone Biles [who has opened up about depression and anxiety issues].
“Depression is one of the things that maybe changes how you enjoy life,” he reflects. “I changed the things I like to do. It’s not only about football now. I love to go to dinner with my wife and to play with my son, Levi, is the best thing for me.
“The time off during the World Cup helped me to remember. I went to Disneyland with my family. It was good to remember that I am only one son, I am only one father, I am only one husband. I am only one man. I am not a superhero.
“When I go to my house my son doesn’t care if I go to the World Cup or if I’m the best player in the world, he only wants to be with me, my wife, the family. He only wants Matheus. I’m Cunha in the football world but in my house they only want Matheus.”
Cunha’s relationship with his own father is very important. His dad, Carmelo, is a chemistry teacher, from a family of teachers, who spurred his son to do well at school. Cunha speaks four languages, including superb English, and gives an answer I’ve never heard to that old question: “What would you have done had you not been a footballer?” He responds: “I don’t know… I like civil construction.” And it was dad who started his football obsession. From when he was tiny, they’d go to church on Sundays then kick a ball around on a concrete court outside the church building. Before long, they were regulars in the communal futsal hall in the condominium they lived in.
He proved so talented that at 11, he was scouted by a futsal team 100 miles away in Recife, the home city of his mother, a hotel worker. At weekends he stayed in Recife, either at his grandmother’s or friends’ homes, and trained and played for his club. By 14 he was transitioning to football and signed by Cortiba – which brought challenges.
João Pessao is in tropical northern Brazil, a city with nine beaches “like the Maldives” where “people are simple and always smiling.” Curtiba (where Cortiba play) is in the cooler, bustling north. He missed home terribly and still does — his dad has just visited England, bringing over his favourite food, a couscous dish integral to north Brazil cuisine, and some Portuguese board games.
At Wolves, over the course of last season, Cunha began getting back to his carefree best, scoring 14 goals, assisting eight, and proving an unpredictable, flexible handful, as happy peeling deep or wide to create and link as he is operating as a traditional striker. Last time Wolves met Chelsea he scored a hat-trick at Stamford Bridge. “It was 100 per cent my favourite game in this club. Everything was well. It’s not only because I scored three goals but because the atmosphere of this day was unbelievable. Everyone was happy. I think we had 11 Ronaldinhos.”
His third goal was a penalty, which he won himself following a mazy dribble. The influence of futsal is still in his game – check his goal for Leipzig, in 2019, which was nominated for the Puskas Award.
He has had quite a collection of managers from Ralf Rangnick to Julian Nagelsmann to Diego Simeone and now Gary O’Neil. He says no one has passion like Simeone, and Nagelsmann was a genius who would tell the players things that would happen in the game and they duly did. But he has a special relationship and fondness for O’Neil. “I feel he cares about me much more than only as a football player. He teaches me a lot of things in life,” Cunha says. “We have some fights of course. We both want to win and the fight is when I think we need to win this way and he shows me no, it’s another way, you need to remember we have a plan, and I say, ‘Yes, of course, I’m sorry!’
“He understands me a lot. It’s not easy to have a lot of guys from different cultures but the whole team has an unbelievable relationship with him. He pushes us to be better.”