Brazil is known for its love for football and their national team is one of the most successful sides that the world has ever seen. They have produced some of the finest footballers in the game and it seems like Brazil and India have more in common than we ever thought. Why? Because they have a player named Mahatma Gandhi.
A 24-year-old from Goiania, Mahatma Gandhi Heberpio Mattos Pires, playing with Atlético Clube Goianiense, a top level club in Brazil’s Serie A is named after none other than Mahatma Gandhi, the father of our nation.
Mahatma Gandhi Heberpio Mattos Pires plays as a midfielder and has been playing for the club since 2011. Though he is not one of the best players at the club, he does have a fairly decent record after playing for over 1000 minutes with Atletico GO, helping them claim the Goiano 1 trophy twice and playing a crucial role in their runner-up finish once.
Going by his name, which Wikipedia clearly mentions as “not to be confused with Mohandas K. Gandhi, the nonviolent practitioner,” no one can possibly think of him as an aggressive midfielder but the reality is far from it. Standing at 179m and with a good pace, he plays as an offensive midfielder and had started as a substitute in 2011.
He has been playing for the club ever since making seven Serie A appearances in 2012, four in Serie B in 2013 but failed to make any in 2014. But he had played at the Campeonato Goiano league with the winning team in the same year with 5 appearances.
Though this is a very weird name for a Brazilian, he is not the only one. Here is a complete line up of players from Brazil with some of the weirdest names. Names like Pikachu following the player’s love for Pokémon, John Lennon for his love for is music, and Mosquito after a nickname called by his friends are clearly some of the weirdest names the game has ever seen.
