Infrequency is one of the great appeals of the World Cup. The fact that the tournament happens every four years makes it incredibly precious for players. For fans, the rarity lends it a prestige because World Cups provide bookmarks for your life. A lot happens in football and in life between tournaments. You might have moved house, had a(nother) child, lost someone dear or else your professional life might have transformed since the last one.
They can really highlight the consistency of the absolutely elite players too. Kylian Mbappe is 27 and he has won a World Cup, scored a hat-trick in another final, won a golden ball, two golden boots and is the competition’s all-time top scorer. Lionel Messi played in World Cup Finals at the age of 35 and 39 respectively. The tournament can, equally, be very cruel to players and their legacies.
You might become an international player shortly after a World Cup ends and not have the opportunity to play in one until your early to mid 20s. You might get injured and miss one of them. You might be an elite player during a dry spell for your nation in talent terms (hi, Vinicius Junior!)
World Cups are such big occasions that they will always, at best, give the players a heady mix of elation and heartbreak. Messi lost two World Cup Finals. Ronaldo had one of the worst moments of his career in the 1998 Final and the best in the 2002 Final. Sometimes, they can frame a player’s career in a very damaging way. I can think of few players for whom this is truer than Gabriel Jesus.
By the time the 2018 World Cup arrived, Gabriel Jesus’ career was going from strength to strength. In 2016, Brazil had been looking for a good number 9 for a decade when he had a brief yet spectacular spell upfront for injury hit Palmeiras, having burst into their team as a left-winger.
At almost no other time in the last 80 years would six very good months upfront for Palmeiras at the age of 19 be enough to qualify you as Brazil’s starting number 9. But Jesus also burst onto the scene at the time that Brazil sacked their underperforming Head Coach Dunga and they replaced him with Tite. The time and the circumstances fell perfectly for Jesus to go, not just into the Brazil squad, but straight into the starting line-up.
He scored twice in a crunch away qualifier against Ecuador in September 2016 and for the next two years he was probably Brazil’s best performing player. He proved to be the perfect foil for Neymar because he was prepared to do the dirty work that allowed Neymar to flourish. At club level, Jesus joined Manchester City in 2017 and despite a knee injury that caused him to miss a couple of months of the 2017-18 season, he scored 13 goals in 29 Premier League games and won the title.
As it is in most countries, few Brazilians bother watching World Cup qualifying, so his form wasn’t really well known by the time the whole country sat down to watch the 2018 World Cup in Russia so he didn’t have the public credit he really ought to have had. The tournament was disastrous for his reputation as he failed to score as Brazil tumbled out at the quarter-final stage.
I happen to think an injury to midfielder Renato Augusto just before the tournament totally disrupted Tite’s system. I also think Neymar’s ego completely took over and the previously fruitful partnership Jesus and Neymar enjoyed gave way to Neymar trying to play the hero and beat everyone on his own.
What I think ultimately doesn’t matter. More than 200 million people saw that Brazil eliminated from the World Cup and the number 9 didn’t score a goal. There is no room for caveat or tactical nuance against that backdrop. The criticism was intense and Jesus was always a guy who took things to heart. He admitted to taking it badly too.
The header image of this article is from the 2019 Copa America Final. He scored twice. Brazil won. But he got sent off for losing his head and pushed the VAR screen on his way off the pitch. Even in what should have been something of a redemption moment for his international career, he sat in the tunnel in floods of tears.
‘There will always be emotion – if you carry the expectations of 200million people you have to have emotion,’ he said after the 2018 World Cup. He also decided that he didn’t want to be a centre-forward anymore and returned to operating as more of a fill-in wide attacker. At club level he had Sergio Aguero ahead of him and the burden of not scoring at a World Cup as Brazil’s number 9 hit him hard.
By the time the 2022 World Cup came around, Jesus had a choice to make. He had started to flit in and out of the Brazil squad due to his increasingly bit-part role at Manchester City. Firmino and Richarlison had started to make an impression in the National Team. In the summer of 2022, he moved to Arsenal, who desperately needed a striker with Lacazette and Aubameyang both having departed.
He enjoyed an electric beginning to life at Arsenal who, like Palmeiras and Brazil in 2016, really, really needed his skills at centre-forward. It was enough to win him his place in Brazil’s squad for Qatar. Unfortunately, in his desire to make amends for the pain of the 2018 World Cup, Jesus ended up aggravating a knee injury and, well, it is fair to say that the Gabriel Jesus that boarded the plane to Qatar and the one that returned to England afterwards were just not the same player.
He has struggled with repeated knee injuries ever since and by the time the 2026 World Cup came around, he wasn’t even remotely in the conversation for one of the weakest Brazil squads in a generation. As a result, he was among the first flurry of players back to London Colney this summer with a year remaining on his contract and a FOR SALE sign firmly around his neck.
Arsenal are currently courting two of his international teammates, one of whom is Brazil’s golden child in attack. Meanwhile, I would certainly not rule out a contract termination for Jesus who, four summers ago, arrived at Arsenal and utterly transformed what an Arsenal attack was capable of. With a fit and firing Jesus this last four seasons, I don’t think Arsenal would have waited until 2026 to lift the Premier League trophy.
There is possibly an alternate universe where Jesus doesn’t go to the 2022 World Cup- either because a decision is made based on his fitness or else because Brazil simply don’t pick him. (He wasn’t selected for the final squad prior to the World Cup in September 2022). In that universe, perhaps his knee gets the rest and / or treatment it needs and perhaps he wins a few more medals at Arsenal and goes to the 2026 World Cup as Vinicius Junior’s wingman.
Perhaps. Perhaps not. Even if his career has been wrecked by injury, Gabriel Jesus has won six league titles (one in Brazil and five in England) across three clubs and he is still 29-years-old. He didn’t quite become the player I and many others thought he would at 18, but his club career has been well decorated. However, it feels like the World Cup has represented three negative and defining bookmarks in his career and, in my view, that feels undeserved.
