When You Walk Through a Storm

Para ler em português, clique aqui.

I have this vision of my father as a younger man. It is deeper than just a memory. Memories are hazy, you know? This is different. This is colourful. It’s warm. Almost like a dream. 

I think I am probably 3 years old, but I’m already kicking a mini football in our living room with my brother Muriel. He’s 8, and I’m already following him everywhere. I have “the rope tied around his waist,” as we say. 

My father just came home from a long day of work, and he’s laying down on the couch, fully reclined. You know how fathers lay down after a long day, like they weigh 400 pounds? “Ahhhhhhhh…. Tô cansado pra caramba….” 

In Brazil, it’s a certain posture. He’s got the pillow under his head, and he’s got his right arm hanging down over the couch.

Me and my brother come running into the room, and we start shaking him. 

“Paaaiiiiii! Come on!!!” 

He protests for a few seconds, and then he rolls off the couch and onto the carpet.

“Yesssss!!!!” 

Then my father rolls all the way under the couch. He disappears. All you can see are two big arms coming out from the darkness, waving around like mad. 

“You’ll never score today. I am Taffarel!” 

It’s the World Cup. The carpet is our pitch. The gap under the couch is our goal. My father’s big hands are Taffarel. 

My brother is Rivaldo, Bebeto, Ronaldo, Dunga….

I get to be whoever he doesn’t pick. (The fate of all little brothers.)

It’s so vivid that I can even smell it. I can smell the couch. I can smell my mom cooking dinner. I can smell my father’s clothes. 

I can see his big hands waving back and forth, trying to make a heroic penalty save in the World Cup Final. Every once in a while, he pops his head out from under the couch and pulls his clown face. My brother and I are laughing like crazy. 

Not only can I close my eyes and see it …. I can feel it, like it was just yesterday. 

---

---

When I got the call that my father died, I was an ocean away from home. I was in Liverpool, and we were in the middle of the 2020-2021 season. His death was sudden. A complete shock. My mother called me and told me that there had been an accident and that my father had drowned at the lake by our house. All I remember was I felt so lost. It did not seem possible that someone like my father could actually be gone. He was a “man’s man,” as they say. As strong as they come. 

I had always heard these stories about him as a kid. He was a goalkeeper, too. It runs in our DNA, I guess. On the pitch, they said he had absolutely no fear. He would charge out and throw his face right into the attacker’s boot. 

“Your father, he was mad,” his buddies told me. 

I thought it was just a story. But it was actually true, and it was a lot deeper than just football. 

On a football pitch, or in real life, he was a man in full. Everything he ever did, it was always “family first.” Always

When he died, it destroyed me. I could not even think about football. I had to keep remembering that I even played football, and that we were fighting for the Top 4. It was even more complicated, because it was right in the middle of the pandemic, and the logistics of getting home were a nightmare. My wife was pregnant with our third child, and Covid was exploding again in Brazil. Her doctor said that it was risky for her to travel, so she had to stay in Liverpool with our kids. That was total anguish for her, because she loved my father so much. We always joked that he loved her the most. If we ever had a little disagreement in front of my father, he would always say, “I think Natália is right.” 

She was the daughter he never had. 

I was going to have to fly to Brazil alone. 

The following two or three days were a blur. The next thing I remember was all the flowers coming to our house. From Virgil, Andy, Fabinho, Firmino, Thiago…. on and on. All my brothers. Everyone sent us flowers with a note of condolences. And not just from my teammates, but even Pep Guardiola and Carlo Ancelotti sent me a condolence letter. It really touched my heart. Every 10 minutes, there was another knock at our door, with a delivery man holding flowers. 

I don’t think those people can understand how much something small like that means when you’re suffering. It was a reminder that even your biggest rivals recognise the human behind the name on the kit. 

I’ll never forget, Jürgen called me, and I was feeling so guilty about missing training, because we were outside the Top 4, and we needed every point. But Jürgen told me to take as much time as I needed. 

I said, “Yes, but, but….”

He said, “No, no. Do not worry about anything.”

Jürgen had lost his own father around the same age, and he understood my pain very well. He was not just a manager to me, but more like a second father. I think everyone could see that, from the moment that he came sprinting like a madman half way across the pitch to jump into my arms when Origi scored against Everton. I pull up that clip on my phone once in a while, and I laugh every time. But there were so many moments that the public never sees, where we would sit on the bus after away matches and toast the wins with a beer, like a proper German and a proper Brazilian.

Jürgen allowed me to take the time to grieve, and not a lot of managers would have been so understanding. To me, it’s the Liverpool way. It’s just different here. Even the players are different. Ray Haughan, who was our team manager at the time, texted me and told me that the boys had all come together and agreed to pay for a private flight for me to go to the funeral so that I wouldn’t have to worry about anything. But it was an impossible situation, because at that time, in order to fly out of the country, you had to be quarantined in a hotel for 14 days when you returned. The thought of coming back from my father’s funeral and being trapped in a hotel room by myself for two weeks was hard, but the worst part was imagining my wife on her own for that long. She was going to be in her third trimester, and anything could happen. 

I called my mom and my brother, and I explained the situation, and that was the most brutal phone call of my life. We cried a lot, but in the end, I decided that my father would want me to stay with my children and his “favourite daughter” and protect them, no matter how hard it was. That was how he lived his life, and that was the best way to honour him. 

Every chance that I had to hug him, I hugged him. Every chance I had to tell him that I loved him, I told him. There was nothing left unsaid. He knew.

Still, I have never felt so far away from home. 

We had to watch his funeral on FaceTime. My brother held up the phone for the entire service, and I was able to pray and cry with my mother, and even say goodbye to my father at his casket. In that moment, as strange as it sounds, you forget that you’re on a screen. All your memories and your love bridge the distance, and you are speaking to your father in eternity. 

It’s true, I didn’t have anything left to tell him. We had already said it all. The only thing left for me to say was, “thank you.” 

Not just for being my father, but for being my friend. 

Without my teammates and without the club, I would not have been able to deal with that time in my life. When I returned to training a few days after the funeral, I would think about my father at random times. I couldn’t help it. I would have a flash of him standing on the sidelines when I was a kid watching me play, standing there like a true stoic, not saying a word. Or fishing with him at the lake, or sitting around the barbeque with him drinking chimarrão, saying a couple words every five minutes. Or him smashing his whole face into a birthday cake in celebration when Taffarel made that famous penalty save in ’98. Or him laying on the couch after a long day, still having just enough strength to crawl under the couch and pretend to be Taffarel…. 

I would have these flashes and I would start crying. Right there in training. 

Imagine trying to sort out the wall to stop Trent’s free kick, and you have tears clouding your eyes! It’s hard enough when you’re not crying, man! 

But my teammates were unbelievable. They never once judged me. They acted like they were all a part of my family and they were in mourning, too. Being able to train again brought me a sense of calm. I always say that I did not “choose” football. You cannot choose what is unconscious, what is already in your bones. 

In Brazil, football is a wave that you ride. 

Returning to the pitch was one of the main things that brought me peace. I rode the wave to calm waters. 

When I would come home from training, I would be so tired. All I would want to do is lay down on the couch, just like my father. Feet up, chimarrão in one hand, pillow under my head. And every single day, like clockwork, my son Matteo would come running into the living room after school and put the ball right in my hand. 

“Let’s plaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyy!”

He’s 5 years old, and he loves football. The way we figured out that he knew how to spell was because we went onto YouTube and in the search history bar all you saw was…..

‘livrpol’ 

‘hi liit liverpol’

‘livrpool dad save’

‘liverpool vs meelan’ 

‘all we need is alisson becker song’

(The last one is for my daughter, Helena — she wants to sing at breakfast every morning.) 

Matteo kept getting better and better, until he could finally spell Liverpool. He gets so mad when we make him go to bed during the late Champions League matches. He’s crushed! The first thing he does as soon as he wakes up is watch the highlights on YouTube.

So far, I get no criticism. 

“We tied last night.”

“Oh yeah? We did?”

“Yeah, they scored and we scored. I love you, daddy.”

Then it’s always time to play on the floor. It doesn’t matter how tired I am. Daddy has to be the keeper. 

We started out playing with the bottom of the couch as our goal, and then he finally made us buy him a “real one.” We put the mini goal in front of the couch, and I lay on the floor and try to stop him, like my father tried to stop me.  

The carpet is our pitch. 

My son is Mo or Trent or Vini Jr. 

I always tell him that I want to be Taffarel. But I have to be Alisson. 

The story is repeating itself. 

And the story is expanding. 

Three months after my father’s death, my son Rafael was born. For my wife and I, it was like hope was reborn. A light shone in our lives again. His name had a special meaning for us. It comes from the Hebrew, meaning “God has healed.” 

Six days after Rafael was born, something happened that I still cannot explain. 

We were playing a crucial match against West Brom. We were fighting for our place in the Champions League, and we had to win that match. It was one of those days where it feels like nothing is working, and it was 1-1 with a few seconds remaining. As a keeper, you are just standing in your box in those moments, feeling helpless. 

But then we won a corner. And our goalkeeping coach shouted for me to run up the pitch. There was nothing to lose. So I ran up the pitch as fast as I could, and I arrived in the box just as Trent was taking the corner. To be honest, as a keeper, you never, ever, ever think that you are actually going to score. 

Just get into the box and create chaos. 

The next thing I know, the ball is coming at my face. I flick my head and I fall to the ground. Then I am just surrounded by a warm glow. That’s the only way I can describe it. Everyone is hugging me. Thiago is hugging me and crying. Firmino is hugging me and crying and laughing at the same time. Mo is celebrating like a little kid, jumping up and down. I have never seen him so happy after someone else scored a goal hahaha!! Complete joy.

It was almost more special that we were still playing in the empty stadiums, without the roar of the fans, because the only thing that I could feel was the love of my teammates, who had gotten me through the hardest time of my life. Our whole bench, the staff, and the kitmen were all cheering so loud that it felt like we were back in front of the Kop again. 

I remember I looked up to the heavens, and it was one of those grey rainy days in England. But for me, the sky was filled with light. 

I said, “Pai…. pai…..” 

It’s for you, Dad! 

When I got back to the dressing room, I was sitting there taking off my boots, and in those moments, when you lose someone close to you, it’s impossible not to ask yourself the question……..

“Did he see it? Was he watching?”

I am a man of faith. Many people know that. But a lot of people do not know that it was not always this way. Real faith came to me later in life. When I was young, we were “at home” Christians. My parents prayed every day, but we rarely went to Church. I believed in God, but I believed in a distant God. As I got older, and I experienced more of life — both joy and pain — I realised that God is closer than you can ever imagine. 

Faith is not something that can be seen, or even put into words. It is a force that is more powerful than just a feeling of emotion, or a slogan. It is the complete trust in the Son of God, Jesus Christ.

I think of this every time I hear the opening words to the most powerful song in football. 

“When you walk …. through a storm….”

There are 5,000 different songs in football, all over the world. But there is only one song that touches the heart in this way. Why is that? I think it is because it is really about the deeper meaning of life. 

No matter who you are, one day, you will face real suffering. Your dreams will be tossed and blown. You will lose people in your life who you love very much. 

In those moments, you can’t help asking yourself the hardest question in the world: “Are they still looking down on us? Will I see them again?” 

I hope to meet my father again one day. I hope to see him on the shores of eternity with a chimarrão in his hand, and maybe we will go fishing, just like old times. Not saying much, just enjoying the water.

Until that day, I know one thing for sure: I never, ever walk alone. In these last four years since my father’s death, my teammates, coaches, friends and neighbours have shown me and my family incredible love and support. And I know that a part of my Dad is still here with us, too. Not just in my dreams, but every time I come home from training and I lay down on the couch, feeling like I weigh 400 pounds, and I hear Matteo and Rafael’s footsteps coming from the other room. 

“Paaaaiiiiiii!!!”

“Tô cansado pra caramba…..”

“You have to be the keeper!!!!”

“OK, OK, OK.” 

I roll onto the floor with a thump. 

“Yesssssss!!!!!”

(My daughter, Helena, she just twirls around and dances while we play.)

Every time they come running, every time I lay down on the carpet and guard the goal with my hands, every time I pull my funny clown face, I can feel my father’s presence. 

“You’ll never score today. I am Taffarel!!” 

The sound of children laughing. That, to me, is the echo of God. 

YNWA, 

Alisson