"It's become a big business," said Marcelo Teixeira, a former scout for England's Manchester United who is the top soccer executive at Fluminense. "But reaching the top is as hard as winning the lottery."
Rio-based Fluminense runs 80 soccer schools around the country where each year more than 6,000 players show off their skills, all of them hoping to be one of the 30 chosen for Fluminense's amateur teams.
For the soccer dreamers in Vidigal, the World Cup is driving their ambition for fame, especially when legends like France's Thierry Henry show up, as he did recently to kick around a ball with them for a promotional event.
The well-cared-for synthetic pitch they play on lies over a dirt field ordered built in the 1990s by a soccer-loving drug lord who once dominated the favela.
Though the community of some 13,000 people is much safer following a 2011 police occupation, many still remember when gangsters used the bleachers as a dumping spot for the bodies of dead rivals. Today, it's where Andrezinho and his teammates gather to learn about the different countries playing in the World Cup.
His coach, Paulo Cezar Bento, said he wants to protect the 150-plus kids he works with in Vidigal from repeating the mistake he made while trying to make it as a pro -- focusing too much on soccer and not on education.
For more than a decade, he's been running a soccer program for kids as young as 4, now funded by Rio's city government, which seeks to instill life lessons that will serve the boys, whether or not they chase their soccer dreams.
"My goal isn't to produce craques," Bento said, using the Brazilian word for a soccer phenom. "I always tell them it's easier to study chemistry in a federal university than it is to be a player. All you need to do is read books."
