”Yes, I think it was just once but I was young,” says Ricardo Pereira, taking a deep breath as he remembers being racially abused. “I was at Sporting but it was nothing very serious. I was a little bit shocked because I was young but it’s something that you learn to deal with.”
Now recognised as one of the Premier League’s best full-backs, the 26-year-old from Lisbon has come a long way since he was released by his boyhood club as a teenager. Ricardo was voted Leicester’s player of the season after signing from Nice in 2018 for €25m and had continued his swashbuckling displays into this campaign until he sustained an anterior cruciate ligament injury in the last Premier League match before lockdown.
Although deeply frustrated to be missing out as Brendan Rodgers’ side attempt to secure a Champions League spot, the Portugal international with Cape Verdean heritage has also been heartened by the Premier League’s pledge to display the Black Lives Matter logo on every player’s shirt for the remainder of the season.
Ricardo was playing in a youth match for Sporting when he was racially abused by the mother of one of his opponents in an experience he will never forget.
“Sometimes people think in football you can do whatever you want but there are limits,” he says. “They don’t know how the person they are being racist towards will feel and they should have respect for everybody because we are all equal. It’s something everyone has to be aware of. We must stand against racism and every type of discrimination – it’s important that everyone starts to talk about it and try to make some changes in the minds of the people.”
Ricardo, who was not been offered a professional contract at Sporting after six years in the club’s academy, is used to doing things the hard way. He spent a season at Naval – a former Primeira Liga club who folded in September 2017 because of financial problems – before making his breakthrough with Vitória Guimarães and moving to Porto.
“It’s tough when you are a kid and you are rejected but it was important for me to experience other more difficult things when I left Sporting. When I joined Naval, the training ground had less facilities than I had been used to and it was good motivation for me to try and get back to the highest level again. That time was essential for my career.”
Ricardo failed to nail down a regular spot at Porto before a loan move to Nice to play under the future Leicester manager Claude Puel in 2015 proved to be a significant moment. Puel converted him from a winger into a right-back and signed him for Leicester, where he has continued to thrive under Rodgers.
As well as contributing five goals and eight assists in two league seasons there, Ricardo had made 16 more tackles than his closest rival in the Premier League this season and is relishing his influential role playing for the Northern Irishman.
“Since the first day, he has told us how he wants us to play, because we have the qualities to do it,” he says of Rodgers. “We noticed a change of intensity in the first training session and it was hard at the beginning because we were not used to it. But week by week and game by game we have improved and it was good to have the seven or eight games [with him] last season so we started this season knowing the manager.”
Ricardo insists it is too early to put a timeframe on his return but says he is making good progress having spent a month in Portugal during the early stages of his rehabilitation. He completed the match against Aston Villa in March despite suffering the injury during the closing stages of the 4-0 victory and discovered the full damage two days later, following a scan.
“At the time we were thinking I might be able to play the next game against Watford because it was nothing serious,” he recalls. “So when the physio called me with the results of the scan it was a real shock.”
The suspension of football because of the pandemic means Ricardo has missed only one Leicester match and he should have an opportunity to stake a claim for a place in Portugal’s squad for the European Championship after it was rescheduled for next summer.
With competition from Manchester City’s João Cancelo and Nélson Semedo of Barcelona at right-back, it is perhaps not surprising he has only seven caps but playing in next season’s Champions League with Leicester would certainly go a long way to swaying the veteran manager Fernando Santos. “For people who don’t know the players we have in that position, maybe it’s strange,” he says. “I have to work hard to earn my place in the squad.”
Ricardo admits he will find it hard not to be involved – “it’s worse to watch than play” – as Leicester attempt to follow up their exploits in 2016 by completing another minor miracle. But having heard the stories from Jamie Vardy and co about that title-winning season under Claudio Ranieri, he is hopeful this season’s vintage can provide supporters with another reason to celebrate.
“They achieved heaven already,” he adds. “Of course, it wasn’t easy for them and it hasn’t been easy for us either. But when we started winning games and were in a good position at the start of the season, the fans were confident in our team and that has grown with every result. It’s the same with us players: every game we win gives us more motivation and momentum to finish the season well.
“We are in a very good position. At the beginning of the season our goal was maybe to get into the top six so we have a great opportunity to do something good. We have to keep going to maintain this position.”