It is one of the strangest careers in modern football.
A star for Chelsea and Brazil, he left European football for good in 2016,
and then headed for China during the peak of his career, and never returned.
So, what did happen to Oscar?
In December 2016, the Chinese Super League was entering its golden age.
Paulinho, Ramires, Ezequiel Lavezzi, Gervinho,
Hulk, Burak Yilmaz, Jackson Martinez were all in the league,
and would soon be joined by Carlos Tevez, Axel Witsel, Javier Mascherano and Yannick Carrasco.
And then Oscar, who was midway through his fifth season at Chelsea and had
48 Brazil caps. He was 25 years old, just coming into his prime.
Seven years later, all of those players have either retired or departed. Oscar,
now 32, is still there. He has just won the fourth
league title of his career but has not added to those 48 Brazil caps.
Why would a footballer of Oscar’s talent swap the Champions League for relative obscurity?
And why, even if he felt compelled to make that decision, would he not return
to Europe after a few years to try to play his way back into the Brazil team?
It is worth remembering just how good Oscar was.
He exploded onto the Brazilian scene with Internacional in 2011, earning a move to
Chelsea in 2012 and becoming a guaranteed starter for the Brazilian national team until 2014.
He won the Premier League under Jose Mourinho in 2015 but, like most Chelsea players,
suffered a drop off the following season. When Antonio Conte arrived at Stamford Bridge
in summer 2016, Oscar was pushed towards the periphery and began to consider his options.
Atletico Madrid, Juventus, Inter and neighbours AC Milan were among
the suitors, but the only proposal Chelsea accepted was from China.
Shanghai SIPG — who changed their name to Shanghai Port in 2021 — paid a reported
€60million for Oscar. His wages were said to be in the region of €24m a year after tax;
reports at the time estimated that to be a 400 per cent pay rise. It made him
one of the best-paid players in world football.
“China has incredible financial power and sometimes makes offers that are hard
to refuse,” Oscar conceded in an interview with football media outlet Copa90 in 2017.
There is a cultural context to consider. Like so many Brazilian footballers,
Oscar grew up poor. His father died in a traffic accident when he was three. His mother, Sueli,
raised Oscar and his two sisters alone, making ends meet by selling clothes from her home.
Football was salvation.
Brazilian footballers often end up supporting huge networks of relatives and friends. How
much is enough to guarantee their comfort for generations to come?
It is to Oscar’s credit that he was transparent about this.
“All football players want to earn money to help their families,” he said in that Copa90 interview.
“When I made the decision to come (to China), I was thinking more of my family than of my career.”
At that stage, however, Oscar seemed set on it being temporary,
expressing the hope that he would return to Europe within a few years.
But he didn’t. Oscar renewed his contract in December 2019,
signing on for five more years. It was well-timed. A month later,
the Chinese government imposed an individual salary cap of €3million
a year for foreign players in the CSL. Oscar, though, was still on an annual salary of €24m.
The cost is that Oscar has won two CSL titles, but barely anyone outside Asia
has seen him in action in seven years. A footballer who started every Brazil
game at the 2014 World Cup has not had a sniff of a call-up since he left Chelsea.
“When I accepted the offer from China I knew that I would be out of the spotlight and out of the
Brazil team,” Oscar said. “It took me a while to accept that. Whenever I failed to make the squad,
I would look at the list of players called up. I knew I was better than some of them.”
Tite, who coached Brazil between 2016 and 2022, did select players from CSL
clubs during that period. Paulinho and Renato Augusto were regulars. But they had both worked
with Tite previously — unlikely Oscar, who felt his move counted against him.
“There’s a big prejudice against those who play in China,” he said “It shouldn’t
be like that. People look down on players just because they’re here.”
Portuguese manager Vitor Pereira was in charge at Shanghai SIPG between
December 2017 and December 2020. He is well placed to explain the
impact that Oscar had on the team — and on Chinese football as a whole.
“When he was in form, he could transform games,” Pereira tells The Athletic. “Sometimes in China,
players try to counteract natural ability with aggression,
so he often had to deal with that, but he had superlative quality.
“You also need a strong personality to understand the limitations of your team-mates and help them
to grow. If you go there with the right attitude, you will make friends and help
others improve. That’s what Oscar did. He has done so much for the club over the years.”
Oscar has said that numerous clubs outside China have made contact with him over the recent years.
Brazilian giants Flamengo offered to take him on loan in 2023 during the Chinese off-season,
but Shanghai declined the offer. There was also interest from Barcelona a year earlier,
but that came to nothing too.
Barring a surprise move in January, it now seems inevitable that Oscar will see out his
contract at Shanghai Port, which runs until the end of the 2024 Chinese season next November.
Then what?
“With my body and my style of play, Oscar told Brazilian website UOL,
“I think I have a great chance of returning to play for a big club in Europe.”