REBELS: Edmundo - 'The Animal' who erased the line between genius and insanity

There were reports of unusual, erratic or downright bad behaviour from the moment Edmundo began to make a name for himself as a prodigiously gifted teenager in the 1980s. Botafogo allegedly kicked him out of their academy for walking naked through the grounds, while it's claimed that Vasco were reluctantly willing to sell him to Palmeiras in 1993, at the end of a hugely promising debut season at the Maracana, because he'd become "a problem" in the dressing room that nobody knew how to solve.

Edmundo's talent, however, was beyond dispute. He was clearly one of the most naturally gifted players Brazil had produced in years. He proved that during two spectacular seasons in Sao Paulo, where he managed to shine in a star-studded Palmeiras team that won back-to-back league titles.

It was during that period that the journalist Osmar Santos christened him 'The Animal' because the Brazil international was 'a beast' of a player, an unstoppable force who was regularly named Man of the Match. As time went on, though, it became an even more apt moniker because of Edmundo's wild conduct, on and off the field.

He clashed constantly with opponents, resulting in five red cards in one season at Palmeiras, but nobody was safe from his rage - not even his coach, Vanderlei Luxemburgo, or his own team-mates. At one point, he even caused a diplomatic incident by lashing out at a cameraman during a Copa Libertadores game in Ecuador.

After spending four days under arrest at the team hotel before being cleared to leave the country thanks to the involvement of the Brazilian foreign ministry, it seemed as if Edmundo had finally seen the error of his ways. "This chapter of my life ends here," he vowed. "A new player will emerge in the Palmeiras jersey."

He continued to lash out at everyone around him, though, and, in June 1995, Palmeiras finally decided they'd had enough, selling him to Flamengo for $5.5 million (£4m). Returning to Rio proved a fatal mistake, though.

In the early hours of the morning of December 2, 1996, an inebriated Edmundo crashed his speeding Jeep Cherokee into a Fiat Uno in Lagoa. Three people died: Carlos Frederico Pontes, the 23-year-old driver of the Uno; Edmundo's girlfriend Alessandro Perrota (20); and a second passenger in the Cherokee, Joana Couto, who was just 16.

In 1999, Edmundo was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to four-and-a-half years in an open prison - but he spent just two nights in custody before his legal team eventually had the case quashed in 2011 by successfully arguing that the statute of limitations had run out after multiple appeals and delays.

The common perception was that Edmundo's fame and fortune had helped him escape meaningful jail time, but he has always insisted that his guilt will never leave him. "I am an eternal repentant," he said. "This sadness does not pass."

Edmundo was actually convicted in absentia, as he had moved to Italy in January 1998, after enjoying the most prolific league season of his career (29 goals in 28 games) during the second of his five spells at Vasco. He described the chance to play in Italy's Serie A as "a dream come true", as it was unquestionably the most prestigious championship in the world at the time.

Fiorentina were just as enthused by his arrival. Despite Edmundo's well-earned reputation as the bad boy of Brazilian football, he was clearly a world-class player, and his acquisition represented something of a coup for La Viola, who pulled out all the stops to sign him. According to the club's former goalkeeper Francesco Toldo, the Tuscans had told Edmundo that Florence was beside the sea in order to convince him to join. Such was their desperation, they also agreed to a very unusual request on the part of the player.

"Fiorentina didn't strike me as a particularly ambitious club," Edmundo admitted years later. "I asked them to include a clause in my contract that would allow me to return to Brazil for Carnival, and Fiorentina agreed. They granted me everything." Almost inevitably, they would come to regret doing so.

Fiorentina realised very quickly that they were dealing with an incredibly combustible character. “I remember when he first arrived, Alberto Malesani put him on the bench for a game against AC Milan and he really wasn’t expecting it," former Viola defender Aldo Firicano told Tuttomercatoweb. "Not understanding that decision, just before we were about to walk out on to the pitch, Edmundo was still there in the dressing room in front of the mirror shaving, as a way of showing his irritation."

The display of defiance didn't end there, though. Edmundo stormed out of San Siro and promptly returned home to Carnival, telling the Jornal do Brasil, "I'm a champion. Fiorentina can’t treat me like this. I've never been on the bench in my entire life - not even when I was eight years old."

Edmundo eventually returned to the Artemio Franchi and, after an impressive end to the season, his Fiorentina career really took off following the summer appointment of Giovanni Trapattoni as Malesani's successor.

His attitude didn't really improve, though. Toldo says Edmundo once punched a youth-team player "square in the face" after being the recipient of a strong foul in training. However, Trapattoni was willing to tolerate such sporadic outbursts of violence for the good of the team.

As the charismatic coach put it in his own inimitable fashion, "Players don't need to sleep together to win the league title." And there's every chance that they would have done had it not been for that infamous clause in his contract.

By the end of January 1999, Fiorentina were top of Serie A and heavy favourites to win their first Scudetto for 30 years thanks primarily to the fantastic form of Gabriel Batistuta, Edmundo and Rui Costa. Everything changed, though, after a frustrating 0-0 with title rivals Milan on February 7.

Batistuta had been forced off in the closing stages of the game in Florence and it was subsequently revealed that the Argentine had twisted ligaments in his right knee. However, even though the team's talisman was facing more than a month on the sidelines, Edmundo refused to even entertain the idea of cancelling his Carnival plans.

When confronted by journalists after arriving at the airport to fly home, he snapped, "I'm not talking. F*ck off! I’m going to Rio, and I don’t know if I’ll come back. No one asked me to stay, and even if they had, I would have left anyway!"

Consequently, while Fiorentina were losing away to Udinese the following weekend, Edmundo was strutting his stuff at the Sambadrome. It was not a good look, and it did not go over well with Fiorentina's fans, who were more than happy to see the back of Edmundo that summer after a disastrous end to the season in which their team won just one of their final eight games to end up finishing third, 14 points behind champions Milan.

After being forced out of Florence, Edmundo rather predictably returned to Rio to re-join Vasca, where he teamed up with Romario, with predictably chaotic results.

In a certain sense, the pair were kindred spirits. They shared the same interests: football, dancing and women. But Rio really wasn't big enough for the both of them. They were just too stubborn and too self-centred to coexist in the same city - let alone the same team. Sometimes, they even refused to pass the ball to one another, while one argument over who got to take a penalty resulted in Edmundo accusing Romario of receiving preferential treatment from Vasco president Eurico Mirando.

"The King decided his Prince should take it," he sniped. After the very next game, Romario hit back by casting his fellow forward as "the court jester" in Edmundo's own metaphor, and it wasn't the first time that he had openly ridiculed his rival-turned-team-mate.

Edmundo was one of several figures from the Brazil national team set-up depicted in derogatory caricatures drawn on the bathroom doors of a beachside sports bar that Romario opened in Rio, and there was certainly a cartoonish, clown-like aspect to his antics. Just a month before his wonder-goal against United, in fact, Edmundo was photographed giving alcohol to a chimpanzee after hiring an entire circus to perform at his one-year-old son's birthday party.

"I've done a lot of stupid things," the striker conceded. "But I'm trying to get better." A lot of leading figures within the Brazilian game didn't think he was trying hard enough, though. Former Selecao coach Mario Zagallo had even suggested Edmundo get professional help after punching an opponent during the 1997 Copa America final against Bolivia - an incident that the match officials failed to spot.

"Imagine if he had been sent off: the national team could have lost the title because of one athlete," Zagallo said while being questioned over whether he would take Edmundo to the 1998 World Cup (he did in the end, but barely played the volatile forward). "I think psychological treatment is essential for this young man's life. He needs to seek help to learn how to control himself. And there’s no shame in undergoing therapy; everyone needs help - some more than others."

Edmundo certainly fell into the latter category, and particularly after the brutal murder of his brother, Luis Carlos - who was found dead in the boot of a car in Rio in November 2002 - was soon followed by the loss of both of his parents.

"I will never recover," he later admitted. "I would trade my fame, my career, my money - everything - to have them back with me. I can only pretend to be happy."

Edmundo has, at least, found some sort of peace in his later years. In 2020, after a decade of estrangement, he even reconciled with his openly-gay eldest son, Alexandre Mortagua, thus facilitating a first-ever photo with his four children on December 26. "What an important and special moment for me!" he enthused on social media. "I am so grateful to have these precious individuals in my life, all in good health... A day that will undoubtedly remain etched in my memory forever!"

In more recent interviews, Edmundo has insisted that he's no longer the man he once was, that the animal inside him has been tamed. He's even claimed that he regrets putting the Carnival before Fiorentina. "If I had stayed with the team, I believe we could have won the Scudetto," he told the Gazzetta dello Sport. "If I could go back in time, I wouldn't return to Rio."

Unfortunately, there is no going back in time. Not for Edmundo. Not for Fiorentina. And not for Carlos Frederico Pontes, Alessandro Perrota or Joana Couto. Unlike the line between insanity and genius, the many mistakes Edmundo made cannot be erased.