Act 1: It's late, and the SantiagoBernabeu is tense. With one already to his name, Alexandre Pato is free and Real Madrid can't react. Drawn to the ball, Sergio Ramos and Pepe are out of the picture, and Marcelo is stranded, too. The ball loops to Pato. Pato scores.Act 2: The Camp Nou glistens under the lights, many still taking their seats as the opening whistle blows. Pato picks the ball up in the centre circle. He skips past Barcelona's Javier Mascherano and storms beyond Sergio Busquets. Pato is in. Pato scores.Premonitions'Not at all.These goals have already been scored.Now Villarreal need him to score them again.Having signed at El Madrigal this summer, Pato is entering perhaps the most important season of his career. Most are aware of the prodigy-turned-what-if theme of his story, the sense of a footballing journey split in two.But away from the bright lights of Milan and the San Siro, free from the double-edged hype machine of his native country, the Brazilian has a chance at new life on the lightly populated coast north of Valencia."Succeeding at Villarreal is a beautiful challenge for me," he said earlier this month when presented by his new club in front of over a thousand fans. "For me it is very important to have this opportunity.I am fully focused on being able to play again at the highest level."The keyword' "Again."From Pato, this was a subtle admission that everything hasn't gone the way it could have; or perhaps, should have. Almost a decade ago, he was signing with the defending European champions AC Milan from Internacionalas one of the hottest commodities in the game, quickly enjoying a breakout period at the pinnacle of the continent.To Pato, there was an alluring, graceful power. Though so young at the time, he was capable of the remarkable, and that was complemented by a smoothness in his movement, the visuals leaving the impression of a striker who would become deadly.But somewhere along the line, it went wrong: injuries, distractions, neglect, naivety.At Milan, Pato's path became wayward. His body grew fragile, a resilience missing.His work ethic was questioned. His life away from the pitch became the focus."It became more common to see Pato in the style or gossip pages than in the sports section," wrote South American football expert Tim Vickery for Bleacher Report in January.This has been the knock on Pato. He's viewed as a prodigious talent who hasn't been able to pair his gifts with the unrelenting professionalism that defines those who reach the top.From Milan, Pato returned to Brazil to sign withCorinthians,the club at which a sideways step became a backward one."At that time [when we signed him in 2013] he was everything we wanted in an athlete: ideal age, he was from here, he had played in Europe, he was on the Selecao," Corinthians president Roberto de Andrade told ESPN last year.It didn't work out, though. Pato never fulfilled expectations, his horrible penalty miss against Gremio damaged his relationship with fans and he spent a loan spell at Sao Paulo at Corinthians' expense. In short, it wasn't the trampoline back to Europe's top shelf that it was meant to be."Obviously, I regret it, looking at the outcome," added De Andrade. "But at the time, most of my critics even agreed. He had all the ingredients for success. But it didn't work. The blame of not working out falls 100 percent on the athlete."There it is again: the accusation that this absence of fulfilment rests entirely with Pato himself. And you sense he acknowledges it now, too. The simple mention of "again" at his Villarreal presentation seemed to indicate he's aware of how he's allowed his career to drift; that he's pushed himself to a point where this is itit's rejuvenation or nothing.Villarreal is a good place for that.With a strong sporting structure but tempered expectation, the Valencian club immediately strikes as an ideal location for Pato, a balanced post-rehab setting, if you like.That might be over-dramatising it, but consider the essence of Villarreal: polished, well-run, quietly excellent on the pitch and detached from the circus that surrounds others.Challenges await, of course. The club's transition from former manager Marcelino to Fran Escriba comes at a difficult time, and the squad is in a period of turnover. That means Pato isn't beginning with the sort of stability and continuity around him there might have been in other years, but still, for Pato, Villarreal just feels right: for size, location, style; for a certain tranquility.He's started well, too. On Wednesday, he scored on his club debut against AS Monaco, continuing his remarkable record in such appearances.Villarreal will hope it's the first of many.A Brazilian. A 26-year-old. A once-hyped prodigy. A mercurial enigma. A new face in La Liga.That'sAlexandre Pato.But it's alsoPaulo Henrique Ganso.Like Pato, Ganso has arrived in Spain this summer looking for new life, and the similarities are striking. This is another former teenage sensation, one whose skill set has stood as a point of difference, but one whose career is defined by a feeling of the undiscovered.He's also moved to a similar club: Sevilla.Though the Andalucians differ to Pato's Villarreal in several ways, they are of the same sort of stature at present and possess the same conviction in their identity. Sevilla are institutionally stable, have a defined method of operation and own a recent record of success. Expectation isn't crushing at the Ramon Sanchez-Pizjuan either, and like at Villarreal, a period of renewal has arrived.Following the exit of former manager Unai Emery, Jorge Sampaoli has been appointed to lead a stylistic revolution at Sevilla. The Argentinian is a proponent of attack-first football based on pressing, intensity and fluid, interchangeable systems. Predictably, the squad turnover has been high: 10 have left, key faces among them; nine have come in.Ganso is the most intriguing to have done so.The Brazilian is anarchetypal footballer of what many perceive as bygone era. A languid playmaker, an artist with anonchalant air, Ganso, despite his size, is not what you instantly envisage in a Sampaoli team.But Sampaoli believes it can work."When we decided to sign [Ganso], we saw a player with subtlety that you do not find in modern football," said the Sevilla boss at a press conference ahead of the UEFA Super Cup. "There are players who play well and players who play badly. Ganso plays well, and he can play in any position."Sampaoli is a disciple of Marcelo Bielsa, a renowned manager whose methods have influenced countless others, including Pep Guardiola. With that in mind, Ganso represents one of the keys to Sampaoli's philosophy: That players shouldn't be pigeonholed; that good players are good players, simple as; that rigid, geometric systems are limited.Sampaoli, it seems, sees Ganso as the creative brain of his team.So can he be'Ganso's notoriety stems from his time at Santos. There, he was part of a sumptuous double-act with Neymar that began in 2009, earning him the description as the "left-footed Zidane" from his team-mate who would go on to become a global phenomenon.From a visual perspective, the comparison was understandable.Alongside Neymar's scorching runs and dazzling feet, Ganso was a tall, elegant No. 10. His touch was velvety. His balance stood out; so did his vision.With Neymar, he was touted as Brazil's next creative force. But that never materialised.As Neymar blossomed, injuries crippled Ganso. He stagnated from 2010 onwards, moving on to Sao Paulo in 2012, never able to meet the hype. But that very-Brazilian hype was part of the problem, as explained by Vickery for Sambafoot:There is something deliciously old fashioned about Ganso's game. With his unhurried air and the subtle way he caresses the ball he came across as a throwback to a previous era, a time of slower, more artistic football. He appealed to the romantic and the nostalgic in all of us. People wanted him to be good, and convinced themselves that he was already the finished article. It became normal, in those early months of 2010, to hear that Ganso was "the best in the world" in his position.Common sense had gone out of the window.In some ways, then, Ganso is a victim of sorts of Brazil's domestic football. His reputation was borne out of a blurred idealism, and his game was shaped by limitations of the play around him. Indeed, the Brazilian game is slower than that in Europe, and the pressing isn't the same. Thus, there's more time, more space, for the playmaker.It elevates the Ganso type. But concurrently, it can be deceptive, and it's now Ganso's task at Sevilla to prove otherwise; to show there's more than what's on the surface; to, at 26, rekindle his career and recapture its old trajectory. Like Pato, Ganso has talent still to fulfil.Follow @TimDCollins
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