Wesley Moraes had never played on a proper football pitch until about seven years ago but that is the least remarkable part of the forward’s journey from poverty in Brazil to become Aston Villa’s record signing. Villa have agreed to pay Club Bruges £22 million for the player, eclipsing the £18 million they paid for Darren Bent in 2011. A brief précis of Moraes’s life is that his father died from a brain tumour when he was nine, he had an unplanned son at the age of 15 and a daughter a year later. Two years later he was working on an assembly line sorting screws and bolts, earning the equivalent of less than £150 a month, to support his family. He started to play…

Source: The Times June 18, 2019 11:02 UTC