A week later than planned, Fabio Aurelio is finally heading home to Brazil.
The former Liverpool left-back’s return to Merseyside for the Legends match with Ajax at Anfield proved to be a painful experience.
Rather than socialising with his old team-mates in the city’s 360 Sky Bar after the game, he spent the night in Aintree University Hospital with five cracked ribs and a punctured lung. Aurelio was hurt towards the end of the first half as he tried to prevent Kiki Musampa from firing home Ajax’s second goal in Liverpool’s 4-2 win.
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“I just tried to make the block and as he followed through after shooting, he ended up hitting me with his knee,” Aurelio says. “You don’t expect an accident like that to happen in a Legends match, but when you go out there in front of 60,000 people, the competitive streak comes out.
“I couldn’t fly back last week because of the damage to my lung. At the start, the doctors said I would need to wait three weeks, so I was a bit scared, but the specialist saw the X-rays a few days ago and said it has settled down. The lung is OK and with the ribs, it’s just a matter of time for them to heal.
“I feel much better now and I’ve been well looked after by the club. There’s always a good side to bad things. It meant I was able to enjoy Sunday’s game against Brighton at Anfield. Apart from the accident, it’s been a fantastic trip.”
Aurelio’s glass-half-full approach served him well during a 17-year playing career in which he overcame a succession of injuries.
After retiring a decade ago, he returned to his home city of Sao Carlos in the Brazilian state of Sao Paulo and started working as an agent. He’s a partner in the firm NG Soccer, alongside his brother-in-law Edu, the former Real Betis midfielder.
“We do our business in Sao Carlos and we have around 35 players,” he says.
“I love the game, but being a manager never appealed to me. The stress, the time it takes up; you don’t really have a life outside. I wanted to spend more time with my family and enjoy watching the kids grow up.”
Aurelio, who grew up idolising Brazil’s 1994 World Cup-winning left-back Branco, was signed by Sao Paulo aged 14 and made his senior debut three years later in 1997. Part of the Brazil setup from the under-15s, he played in the same youth team as Ronaldinho.
“It was amazing watching how he grew as a footballer and what he became,” he says. “He changed a lot after coming to Europe, but even at such a young age, with the skills he had, the potential was clear.”
After representing Brazil at the Sydney Olympics in 2000, Aurelio signed for Valencia in Spain and his six years at the Mestalla yielded two La Liga titles, the UEFA Cup and the UEFA Super Cup under Rafa Benitez.
“I arrived at Valencia around six months before Rafa. Hector Cuper was the coach and had reached back-to-back Champions League finals but lost both, so they decided to make the change,” he says.
“Rafa had just won promotion with Tenerife. In his first season, we won the league for the first time in 31 years and for the city that was something incredible, especially as Barcelona and Real Madrid were so dominant.”
A broken leg limited Aurelio’s involvement in 2003-04 before Benitez left to join Liverpool. Two years later, they were reunited at Anfield as Aurelio became the first Brazilian to sign for the club.
“My contract was running out at Valencia and I got a call from Rafa in the February asking if I’d like to join Liverpool,” he says.
“My ambition was to play for the national team. I’d been called up once at Valencia, but a knee problem meant I missed the opportunity.
“At Valencia, I would play left-back, left midfield, left winger. I wanted to settle as a left-back as it would help me with the national team and I saw that chance with Rafa as he knew me well.
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“Once I announced it, people in Valencia would say: ‘What are you doing? Are you crazy? You are leaving the weather here to go there? You won’t see the sunshine anymore!’. But I was so excited about it. Becoming the club’s first Brazilian player was something big.”
Aurelio made an impressive start, clocking up 25 appearances in 2006-07, before rupturing his Achilles in the first leg of the Champions League quarter-final win over PSV Eindhoven. It meant he missed the 2007 final defeat to AC Milan in Athens.
The following season he re-established himself, scoring his first goal for the club with a spectacular volley against Bolton Wanderers. But in the first leg of the Champions League semi-final at home to Chelsea, he limped off after tearing his adductor. His replacement, John Arne Riise, scored the late own goal which cancelled out Dirk Kuyt’s opener at Anfield and the Londoners won the second leg 3-2 after extra time at Stamford Bridge.
“It was really difficult to deal with,” he says. “It always seemed to catch me in moments where I was really improving and looked set to achieve bigger things. Every time you come back from a bad injury, it gets harder.”
The 2008-09 season was his best for Liverpool with 33 appearances, three goals and six assists. The highlight was a stunning free kick in the 4-1 rout of Manchester United at Old Trafford in March 2009 — just four days after Real Madrid had been beaten 4-0 at Anfield in the Champions League.
A magnificent Fabio Aurelio free-kick at Old Trafford in 2009 🎯😍 #MUNLIV pic.twitter.com/qR6FQElsYd
— Liverpool FC (@LFC) August 20, 2022
“That moment was perfect,” he recalls. “(Nemanja) Vidic had just been sent off and I scored to put us 3-1 up. If I could go back and experience one game again, it would be that one.”
There was another memorable free kick in a 4-4 thriller with Chelsea at Stamford Bridge in the quarter-finals of the Champions League, but Liverpool bowed out after losing the first leg 3-1.
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With United beating them to the title by four points, Liverpool finished empty-handed. As the debt-ridden reign of owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett took its toll, the club’s fortunes nosedived.
Benitez left in the summer of 2010 and Aurelio was set to follow as a free agent. However, Roy Hodgson took over and offered him a new two-year contract.
Hodgson lasted just six months, with Liverpool in a mess on and off the field before the return of Kenny Dalglish — three months after Fenway Sports Group’s takeover — provided some much-needed positivity.
“As a player, there’s not much you can do about the off-field stuff. But, deep down, you are influenced by the situation around the club,” he explains.
“You only have to look at recent years at Liverpool with everyone in the background really connected and together. That makes a big difference. It’s one of the reasons for their success.
“I got released by Rafa after coming back from injury. But by pre-season, I was fit and Roy was looking for a left-back. He took a look at me and asked me to sign. It was unexpected, but it was a gift for me.
“It was different with Kenny. He was a massive figure for the club. Everyone had huge respect for him. Roy didn’t have the same kind of impact as Kenny.”
The arrival of Jose Enrique from Newcastle United in the summer of 2011 limited Aurelio’s game time and he featured just three times for Liverpool in 2011-12 before returning to Brazil to play for Gremio. The day before he was due to make his debut, he ruptured his anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in training. Once again, he battled back before retiring at the age of 34 in 2014.
Keen to know why he had been hampered by injuries, Aurelio enlisted the help of the former Liverpool physio Victor Salinas during the latter stages of his career.
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“I wanted to know why it kept happening when I looked after myself the right way. Victor took me to Barcelona to do some DNA testing and check everything about my body,” Aurelio says.
“As I’d had a few calf problems, he said I must have a lot of scar tissue there, but they found none. I started to understand that it wasn’t the muscle that was the problem but the tissue that covered it. I was fighting against something I would never be able to beat.”
Aurelio, who played 134 times for Liverpool across six seasons, has learned to appreciate what he achieved rather than dwell on what might have been. Those broken ribs and punctured lung won’t put him off returning for the next Anfield Legends match in 2025.
“Playing for the national team would have completed the dream for me, especially after going from the under-15s through to the under-23s,” he adds.
“Twice I was called up, but injuries meant I couldn’t be involved. That’s the one thing I look back on and think: ‘What a pity’.
“I’m proud that with all the problems I went through, I managed to have a 17-year career. I had a serious cartilage problem at Valencia, which I thought might end my career. But I went on to spend six years at Liverpool.
“People say it doesn’t matter how many times you get knocked down, it’s about how many times you get back up. I was still able to enjoy playing at Anfield again. I just would have been mad if it had happened at the start of the game.”
(Top photo: James Pearce/The Athletic)
