Football's Forgotten Ballers: Grafite

Our journey to celebrate Football’s Forgotten Ballers continues as we bring forward the accomplishments and skill of those players who shone briefly but brightly as they managed to capture the eyes and hearts of fans in that small period of time. 

Our first part of the journey took us to France where Yoann Gourcouff glided and strutted on the world stage for Bordeaux before enigmatically drifting away from the big stage, but not before reviving the fortunes of a fallen giant.

Our second stop takes us on a short journey to Germany, where a Brazilian striker overcame the odds and his own stature to become the Bundesliga’s most deadliest hitmen of that time, scoring goals left, right, and centre for his side before fading away as spectacularly as he burst on to the scene.

For our second baller, we bring you Brazil’s Grafite, who plundered goals at will while at Wolfsburg in what was a fleeting time where he was unparalleled and invulnerable.

Grafite: “Pencil-lead” to Title-leading marksman

Like all the Brazilian footballers who have graced the biggest stages in the world, Edinaldo Batista Libanio, who you and I know as Grafite, came from modest upbringings. Selling garbage bags to support his family in order to make ends meet, he also found football to be the only saving grace for him and a path to get away from the life of poverty and strife. Fortunately, he was damn good at it, and that caught the eye of FC Matonense, who rewarded him with his first contract.

It is here where he got the nickname “Grafite”, which meant pencil-lead in Portuguese. The nickname stuck to him because of his slender, yet towering frame. However, he did not stick around much, as he kept moving from one club to another, with limited to no success in those clubs. A lean stint in South Korea followed, which was then succeeded by a return back to his home country in Brazil, playing for Goias.

It was this stint that saw him recapture his lost favours with the game. A reborn Grafite began to find his scoring touch that had seemed to have deserted him in the years gone by. 12 goals for Goias meant that domestic giants Sao Paolo secured his services, and after another 2 years of domestic success with the goals, it was time for him to take his talents to the European theatre.

Le Mans was the team to win the early race for his signature in 2006. He kept in line with his nomadic journeyman status, and stayed there for just a solitary full season, but he impressed nevertheless, adding a further 12 goals to his tally which did his reputation as a goalscorer no harm at all, only serving to increase it even more. And it was around this time that he hopped clubs again, this time taking him to Germany, with Wolfsburg managing to sign him for the 2007 season.

Now at that time, Wolfsburg were a pretty controversial outfit, being one of the clubs not following the 50+1 rule in German football, making them the pantomime villains for the longest time before RB Leipzig took over that crown from them in the 2010’s. But despite Volkswagen pumping in the investment, the recent past had not been kind to them. Two successive 15th-placed finishes meant that change was needed, and Grafite was one of the many names brought in to bolster the side in the hope of taking that step up to challenging for bigger prizes.

Grafite had a pretty respectable first season for the club, where he added another double-digit season to his tally, scoring 12 goals in the 28 times he played for the club, with Wolfsburg eventually sealing a spot in the UEFA Cup, now known as the Europa League.

If the first season was a gentle reminder of what he could do, the 2008/09 season was an absolute hurricane of Samba excellence that left German football aghast and bewildered at the sheer scale of excellence that Grafite unleashed.

It was not the best of Wolfsburg’s starts. 4 wins in their first 10 games meant that they were perched at 6th place in the table halfway through the season. However, that did not deter Grafite, who started the season like a house on fire. Despite managing to play only 13 out of the first 21 games of the season, he kept banging in the goals, scoring 12 of them. He struck an impeccable understanding with his strike partner, a young unheralded Bosnian called Edin Dzeko. 

And then from Matchweek 19 onwards, Wolfsburg and Grafite both went on an almighty run of form. In that 10-match winning run, Grafite scored at will, with a brace in a 3-1 win over Hamburg, a hat-trick in an all-time classic 4-3 win over Schalke, and a goal against Bielefeld. But the best was yet to come.

It was the game against Bayern that showcased Grafite at the peak of his scoring prowess. Wolfsburg had the game wrapped up at 4-1. Grafite was already on the scoresheet once, but he wanted more. Wolfsburg and the Volkswagen Arena wanted more. So he did what only he could do, and he did it with stunning nonchalance.

Receiving the ball in Bayern’s territory, he carried it for 10 yards before he unleashed the Brazilian DNA inside him in audacious style. He first victimised Andreas Ottl with a turn that will probably still haunt the latter in his dreams. He then danced past Christian Lell, left Phillip Lahm, Breno, and goalkeeper Michael Rensing in his wake. With his back to goal, just when it felt like the move passed him, he added the creme de la creme to top it all off. With Bayern bodies all around, he unfurled a backheel with so little power that the ball went into the back of the net like it had a mind of its own, with its speed felt like it was taunting and teasing the helpless Bayern players.

Such was the goal, that Fritz von Thurn und Taxis, who was commentating that game, went on to say that “This is definitely the goal of the season, if not the best goal I have ever seen since the Bundesliga started in 1963.” His teammate, Andrea Barzagli went on to say that he “was blowing it from the back” so that it would go in.

That goal not only punctuated Wolfsburg’s eventual canter to the title, their only one till date, but it also catapulted Grafite’s launch to superstardom on the World Stage. Grafite helped himself to 28 goals for the season, and his goal was nominated for the inaugural Puskas Award, getting third place that season. He won the Germany Player of the Year, and that was an accolade no one could argue about. He even went on to bag a hat-trick in his first Champions League appearance, the one of only 9 people to achieve this feat.

A call to the Brazil side to the 2010 FIFA World Cup followed, but that was the end of his ascent. His slide after his heroics at Wolfsburg was gradual, and after a spell in the middle east, he eventually slipped out of public viewing, never to be seen again.

This was the tale of Grafite, the boy who was christened as “Pencil Lead” who was as sharp a goalscorer as one could imagine. Well-travelled but little-understood.