The nights close in and autumn turns to winter, and Richarlison is braced to knuckle down and turn another promising start to the season into something more tangible.
‘We want to take Everton into Europe and I hope we do it this season,’ he tells Sportsmail as the Premier League returns after the international break.
‘Our fans and the club deserve it. Our challenge this year is to have a bit more consistency than last season.’
Everton forward Richarlison is keen to deliver European football to fans this season
'Our challenge this year is to have a bit more consistency than last season,' he told Sportsmail
When Richarlison first arrived in English football at Watford, the culture shock and drastic change of climate made it hard for him to settle. He was grateful for help from Heurelho Gomes, goalkeeper and a fellow Brazilian, to help him through the tough start.
‘He was like an older brother,’ says Richarlison. ‘I was only eating burgers and soda and I lost five kilos. My city in Brazil is very hot and the sun shines all the time. Then I got here and it was cold. There is no sun for most of the year, then came the hard winter.
‘I couldn’t feel my feet when I was going to training or games — they were frozen. That was the worst part. But now I feel like I’m at home.’
Richarlison was born and raised in Nova Venecia, 500 miles north of Rio de Janeiro. His family worked on coffee plantations and, as a teenager, he would accompany his grandfather to harvest the crop.
Richarlison admitted to struggling to adapt to life in England when he joined Watford
‘I couldn’t feel my feet when I was going to training or games — they were frozen,' he recalled
It was also a childhood where he witnessed poverty and crime, in a neighbourhood where drugs and violence were rife and football represented a chance to escape.
‘My father Antonio and my uncle Elton told me to play football and stay away from bad things,’ says Richarlison. ‘I escaped from a reality that some friends couldn’t.’
Once, at the age of 14, he found a gun aimed at his head following a game of football with his friends in a notorious neighbourhood.
‘Today, it is easier to talk about it but I was very scared at the time. I thought I was going to die,’ he recalls. ‘We were leaving the field and some guys thought we were drug dealers selling in their area.
‘I told them we were on our way home. I was lucky because I remained calm. That made me want to change things, to give my family better conditions.’
Like Marcus Rashford in the UK, Richarlison has become a powerful campaigner in Brazil.
