I don't know exactly what happened when Arsenal came to talk to him and his agent."He's a good player. If the club had bought him he was going to be in as a striker, I think, from speaking to Ars?. It was a big miss but now we need to continue and forget about that. I think Arsenal will find some other player in the future."I'm not disappointed [with the transfers in], that's not the right word, but if you see what other teams did to improve their teams and get stronger compared to our club we have just signed Alexander Hleb [from Stuttgart], Alex Song - and some young players I think the manager knows what he is doing. At the moment we understand the situation at the club because we have a new stadium, but for the next year that is - maybe - fine.
From what I know from Ars? the club will sign if it is necessary for a certain position."There is every reason for the club to want to offer Gilberto some reassurance over their future as they try to persuade him to extend a deal that runs until next summer. He has settled in England like few other Brazilians, his command of the language is superb and he remains sanguine about the amount of days that this British summer might extend to - although when we meet the damp outside offers little cause for optimism. "It's not good today but this is the summer and it has been OK recently," he says, "And I still have my holidays in Brazil and the beach."We are still talking [about his future] but I want to stay at the club. They know what I want and it's good that they have ambitions for the team to win something more. That's why I want to stay: because they want to win more titles I am also very happy here I don't need to move.
I am settled, the team is very good and I am playing at a big club with experienced players. I don't think it will be difficult to sign a new contract."If he does end his days playing for Arsenal, then the club will be witness to one of the last professional careers that began the way so many did before the advent of the modern footballer: with a manual labouring job and a hard dose of the real world. Gilberto's life story is well-known but the stints he did in a sweet factory and a quarry to earn money for his family who were nursing his sick mother could almost belong to some sepia-tinted English tradition of the great amateur sportsman. It interrupted his career in his teenage years and he finally made his mark with Atletico Mineiro, whom Arsenal paid £4.5m for him in 2002.He describes his childhood in Usina Luciania as a dream - "I had no responsibility in my life, I played football on the street with cousins and friends, and we never had any contact with drugs or violence" - and at 12 he moved to the nearby Lagoa de Prata to play football. It was around then that his mother was ill and he had to stop playing for the local side Americas in order to work.
