Rivaldo: The Brazil & Barcelona great who - in childhood poverty - never dared to dream

In early 1991, an 18-year-old stood in a bakery in Paulista, a rundown region of Recife in north-eastern Brazil, waiting to be interviewed by local media. He didn't look much like a footballer.

Troublingly thin, his nondescript brown T-shirt hanging off his shoulders and long legs curved outwards at the knee — a sure sign of vitamin D deficiency and the reason for his bow-legged gait.

His cheeks appeared sunken, the result of having lost most of his teeth to chronic malnutrition in his early teens.

He had recently made headlines having looped in a perfect, neck-straining header on debut for local side Santa Cruz. As a result, a TV reporter had sought him out, keen to discuss his career ambitions.

The modest young man replied between sips on a fresh coconut: «My dream is already being realised; to play for Santa Cruz. I hope to achieve more and become an idol for the club's fans.»

Rivaldo, who turns 50 in April, achieved much, much more. He can now look back on a career that not only vastly exceeded his own expectations, but disproved the widely-held belief that we must dream big to achieve great success.

Within a decade of that interview, he had won the Ballon d'Or, been named Fifa's World Player of the Year and scored for Barcelona what many consider to be the greatest hat-trick of all-time.

By 2002, he had lifted the World Cup as an integral part of Brazil's fearsome frontline — Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Rivaldo. A year later he added a Champions League title with AC Milan.

Dream big, they say. Unless your upbringing does not allow it.

«You have to live in poverty to know what poverty is,» Rivaldo told Argentine football magazine El Grafico in 1999. «You work all day to have very little, to go hungry, to suffer.

»In Paulista it