Naz Majeed

13 September 2011. It is the opening day of the Champions League Group Stage, and all eyes are on Group H, where Barcelona welcome AC Milan to the Nou Camp.

Defending Champions Barcelona are still on a high after a majestic 3-1 win over Manchester United in May saw them capture their second European crown in three years, and aside from Seydou Keita deputizing for the injured Gerard Pique, still have one of the most formidable teams ever assembled.

Xavi and Andres Iniesta had run circles around any and all before them, at Pep Guardiola’s behest, and they, of course, had a certain Lionel Messi, starting alongside David Villa and Pedro, all scorers in that Final so fresh in their memory.

Referee Martin Atkinson would blow his whistle, and we were surely in for a heavyweight Champions League bout.

Milan were up within 24 seconds.

Receiving the ball just inside the Barcelona half, Alexandre Pato would need three touches to beat the entirety of the Blaugrana defence, turning and accelerating to leave Sergio Busquets and Javier Mascherano for dead before slotting past Victor Valdez.

It was a stunning goal and one which demonstrated the very best of Pato - the close control, devastating acceleration, and a clinical finish. The winner of the European Golden Boy award in 2009, the Brazilian had long been touted as a wonderkid, helping Internacional to the Club World Cup in 2006 (where they beat Barcelona in the Final).

However, this goal at the Camp Nou might have been the last bright spot on a career that had once seemed to promise so much but fizzled more than sizzled.

Having scored 15, 12, and then 14 goals in each of his previous seasons, Pato had been the Serie A Young Player of the Year in 2009, and played a vital role in their Serie A title win in 2010/11, playing alongside Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Robinho in the last Milan side to have won the league title.

A week after scoring that goal, Milan would lose 3-1 to Napoli at the Stadio San Paolo, and then draw 1-1 with Udinese at home three days later, a game in which Pato would succumb to injury, falling into a pattern that had marred much of the previous season, despite the title win.

Out until November, Pato would return against Fiorentina in a game that ended goalless, ending Milan’s run of 5 straight wins. In January, however, Pato would once again fall to a thigh injury, ruling him out for the rest of the season.

It was during this time Paris Saint-Germain attempted to make a move for Pato, but the deal fell through with the forward electing instead to stay at Milan, only to see Thiago Silva and Zlatan Ibrahimovic leave for the Parc Des Princes in the summer.

Alessandro Nesta, Filippo Inzaghi, Gennaro Gattuso, and Clarence Seedorf would also depart, and quite suddenly, Pato had gone from being a promising prospect to becoming their main man. Despite this, most Milan fans were optimistic, still revelling in the memory of that mesmerizing goal against Barcelona.

He would miss the first six weeks of the season, returning to the side in late October. Pato would play only 4 Serie A games for Milan that season, form and fitness abandoning him when his side needed it most. In early January 2013, he would sign for Corinthians in Brazil, allowing him to escape the pressure and demands of an ailing Rossoneri side.

After a debut goal, Pato quickly fell out with fans of Corinthians, missing a string of big chances in important games. At one point going ten games without scoring, Pato also missed the decisive penalty in the Copa do Brasil that year, attempting a panenka during a penalty shootout against Gremio. The chip saved by his former AC Milan team-mate Dida, Pato saw Corinthians crash out of the cup, drawing even more ire from supporters.

He would then move to São Paulo (again scoring on his debut), scoring 19 goals in 62 league games over two years, before a surprising loan move to Chelsea materialized in the January 2016 transfer window.

Yet another debut goal followed the move, though the debut itself came more than two months after signing for the London side. He only played twice for Chelsea, returning to Brazil at the end of the 2015/16 season, before Villarreal would take a gamble on the former wonderkid, bringing him to Spain in time for the 2016/17 season.

As expected, there would be another debut goal, but in total Pato would play only 14 league games, once again struggling with injuries and unable to consistently impress when he was physically fit. A reprieve came, then, from the Far East.

Tianjin Quanjian signed Pato for a sizable fee in January 2017, the newly-promoted Chinese Super League side having also appointed Fabio Cannavaro to be their head coach. During a period where Chinese clubs had been snapping up attacking talents from all across Europe, the deal to take Pato to Tianjin was intriguing, with fans and pundits eager to see if there was still the remnants of the player that had single-handedly put Barcelona to the sword just over 5 years previously.

He would make his debut for Tianjin in March in a 2-0 loss, missing a host of chances to score. During the same week Pato - playing alongside Axel Witsel for Tianjin - would go on to miss a last-gasp penalty against Shanghai Greenland Shenhua (who had Carlos Tevez in attack), denying Tianjin their first ever league win.

Pato would actually find a run of form for Tianjin, scoring 26 goals for the side in 37 games from May 2018, admittedly against a standard of defenders which did not match those he had been up against in Europe, or South America.

Now back in Brazil with São Paulo, the most recent highlights of the player known fondly as “Alex the Duck” are images of him ghosting past befuddled defenders in the Chinese Super League.

It is a far cry from those few moments at the Nou Camp where he looked like he was finally going to come good on the promise he had been promising since 2006, a full half-decade before that game. It is not almost an entire decade since his Champions League goal against Barcelona, and it is perhaps poignant to realize that AC Milan did not actually win that game, but Alexandre Pato, like a race car, blazed out at the start to make a mark before sputtering and failing to make it to the end.

The allegory is made even more fitting when you look at how Pato has scored debut goals for six different clubs, but has not helped any side win a major honour in almost a decade. The former Golden Boy is hardly the only one to have won the award and fallen by the wayside, but it is startling to realize that he is still only 30, and already so far from what was once expected of him.