Casemiro uncovered: How referee dossiers and a pizza ban made a champion

Do not talk to Casemiro about pizza and Old Trafford. No, Manchester United’s new £60 million signing is not oddly traumatised by the 2005 ‘Battle of the Buffet’ with Arsenal; instead, it is likely to spark memories of one of his earliest set-backs in a largely gilded professional career.

Casemiro was just 15 when he first showcased his talents at Old Trafford, making the trip with his first club, Sao Paulo, to play in the Nike Cup, a youth tournament featuring some of the world’s biggest clubs. He was part of a highly talented generation of players including, among others, Tottenham Hotspur winger Lucas Moura, former Chelsea midfielder Oscar and Brazil international centre-back Rodrigo Caio. 

Even that talent was not quite enough to defeat Barcelona in the final, but while the match itself has long since faded from memory, those present on the day still remember Casemiro’s reaction. 

“Before facing Barcelona, we had beaten Schalke 04 in the semi-finals and decided to order some pizzas for the team to celebrate,” Bruno Petri, his first Sao Paulo coach and now a member of his entourage, recalled to Telegraph Sport. “But then, after losing in the final, Casemiro was really mad on our flight back home.

“Even as frustrated as I was as a manager, I thought he was overreacting a little bit, especially for a kid of his age. So I asked him, ‘Why do you look so upset, Casemiro?’ And he explained, ‘I don’t think we should have bought pizza before the final.’ I was speechless, but that showed how much he cared about the team, despite being so young.”

That relentlessly driven attitude has not been diluted with the passage of time, as his new United colleagues are about to find out ahead of a possible debut against Southampton on Saturday.

The 30-year-old is so meticulous that, before each match he plays, he commissions a dossier from his staff on the referee, containing information such as the official’s reputation, how he prefers to be called, where he is from, whether he has another job and his style of match management. 

And it does not stop there: he also began studying English a few years ago to improve his communication with the officials. He believes that to be a sign of respect, but also something that can help deliver an edge for his team. 

“He plays in a role where you talk a lot to the referees and are more likely to receive a card. So it’s important that they understand what he says and that he’s able to argue with them if necessary as well. It may be helpful in certain situations,” explained Bruno dos Anjos, a former team-mate and one of his closest friends.

For many of his nine years as a Madrid player, Casemiro was the embodiment of his coach’s demands. He has even described himself as their “soldier” on the pitch, and had such influence in the dressing room that when it came to choosing between his team and his family, there was only going to be one winner.

In 2019, Casemiro had won the Copa America with Brazil and was allowed to report back to pre-season at Real a couple of weeks later than his colleagues. He had bought flights for his wife, Anna, and daughter Sara (he has subsequently had a son, Caio) to travel to Orlando and spend some time together in the Disneyland parks.

They were all counting down the days for the trip when Real were humiliated 7-3 by cross-city rivals Atletico. At that moment, Casemiro concluded that he simply could not be taking time out to ride rollercoasters and posing for pictures with Mickey Mouse while the club were getting so much criticism. And so he cut his holidays short and headed back to training 10 days earlier.

Such an attitude only enhanced his status at the Santiago Bernabeu and won him the right to decide when to leave the country that had been his home since 2013. Unlike many who have gone before him, he was able to depart for United through the front door, not the back.

It is a far cry from his childhood, when he was so nervous he would refuse to walk on the Sao Paulo underground system’s ventilation grates. 

“Casemiro would tell me that he would fall into it and die. I had to come back and walk with him, so he could see that he had no reason to fear,” says Petri. “He still refers to this as one of those moments when he learned to have courage in life.”

United’s new anchorman certainly needed a lot of it while growing up, given his family was abandoned by his father when he was only three. For a brief time, he was not even sure whether he had a future as a footballer. 

After joining Sao Paulo aged 14, he was diagnosed with hepatitis A and had to be sidelined for his first three months, and regularly broke down in tears while watching the other children train.

Even when he did break through to the senior team in 2010, things did not progress smoothly. His performances never quite reached their full potential and his shyness was often mistaken for arrogance. The comparisons with Moura did not help, either, and even led Casemiro to complain in interviews that his team-mate had received a wage raise when he had not.

Sao Paulo’s fans turned on him, chanting “Casemiro is dead” in 2012 but, a decade later, and his reputation both in his home country and in the world game could not be more assured. Now comes arguably his greatest challenge – helping to resuscitate one of football’s most famous names in Manchester United.