There were points in Adriano's football career when it wouldn't have been a surprise to see him still going strong at 40.
If nothing else, that's because there were moments when it felt like the Brazilian striker could do whatever he wanted, for as long as he wanted.
Instead, though, the former Inter Milan star turns 40 with his top-level football career a distant memory.
Six years have passed since his last game as a professional, 10 since his last league goal for any of his clubs. It's a dozen since he last pulled on the famous shirt of the Brazilian national team.
The decline may have been as dramatic as the rise, but there was more to Adriano's career than the numbers on the pitch or the unstoppable shots on football video games.
As he turns 40, Mirror Football looks back on a career like no other.
What is your fondest memory of Adriano? Have your say in the comments section
Indeed, Adriano's was career that was almost over before it began, with only an intervention from a coach preventing him from being released by Flamengo as a teenager.
Sensing an unlikely second chance, after being moved from left-back to centre-forward, he knew he wasn't going to waste it.
"At that point, I knew that it was about survival," the Rio-born star wrote for The Players' Tribune in 2021.
"When they moved me up front, I knew it was my last chance. So what did I do? Bro, I fought . I punched everyone who was standing in my way."
The fights might have come first, but the goals followed soon after.
Eleven of them in his first season as a teenager with the Rubro-Negro brought a senior Brazil debut at 18, and it wasn't long before he'd begun attracting interest from Europe.
Adriano's career was made up of big moments.
Occasions when he played as if the next 10 minutes were the last he would ever spend on a football pitch. And perhaps this can be put down to what happened in his Inter debut in a 2001 friendly against Real Madrid.
"I wasn’t even supposed to be in the side," he later told World Soccer when reflecting on the moment at which he announced himself to Inter fans just a week after signing.
"But there had been so many injuries, and [Inter’s then coach Hector] Cuper took me along, even though I knew I was about to be loaned out.
"When I was sent on to the pitch, I knew I had just 10 minutes to let people see who I was and what I was capable of."
With Vieri, Ronaldo and Mohamed Kallon on the Nerazzurri's books, even that spectacular entrance wouldn't be enough to propel Adriano to the first team.
He was prepared to wait, though. And in 2004, after scoring goals for Fiorentina and Parma, he returned to the fold. Cuper had gone by this point, as had Ronaldo, but that didn't matter.
""Adriano and Ronaldo are two players with different characteristics. But as long as I am at Inter I will try to help Adriano become stronger," new boss Alberto Zaccheroni said upon bringing Adriano back to the San Siro.
"I've always rated him and I've always spoken well of him, even when I wasn't coaching anyone. You can check in the newspapers. I'm fully aware how good Adriano can become."
In the following two-and-a-half years, though, 'The Emperor' would surpass even those expectations. 59 goals at a rate of better than one in two, and interest from all over the Europe. Oh, and status as one of the best ever players on Pro Evolution Soccer, with an unprecedented 99 rating for shot power.
As the story goes, it was the death of Adriano's father which brought about his decline.
While it's more complicated than that, with the best goalscoring season of his career coming immediately after getting the news, there's no doubt the loss hit him hard.
"I don’t really want to talk about it, but I will tell you that after that day, my love for football was never the same," he explained in his Players' Tribune essay.
"He loved the game, so I loved the game. It was that simple. It was my destiny. When I played football, I played for my family. When I scored, I scored for my family. So when my father died, football was never the same.
"To be honest with you, even though I scored a lot of goals in Serie A over those few years, and even though the fans really loved me, my joy was gone. It was my dad, you know? I couldn’t just flip a switch and feel like myself again."
He has spoken of a period when he "didn't stop drinking," explaining "I only felt happy when I was drinking, I'd do it every night.
"I drank everything I could get my hands on: wine, whiskey, vodka, beer. Lots of beer."
With his Inter exit drawing closer, Sven-Goran Eriksson's Manchester City were reportedly interested, but a return to Brazil was the only answer even if, in Adriano's own words, "I gave up millions".
The return home worked, at least for a while, but a litany of off-field issues continued to follow him around.
Adriano found his goalscoring touch again, during spells with Sao Paulo and back at Flamengo, and even finished as top scorer in Brazil's Serie A in 2009 - something he never achieved in its Italian namesake.
After he was left out of the 2010 World Cup squad, though, he couldn't fully fight back against the realisation that his time at the top were ending.
An achilles injury the following year was the final setback, and a handful of games in Brazil and the US were simply the last act of someone who looked like a different player to the Adriano who had forced fans to sit up and take notice.
Watching his final goal, for lower-league American side Miami United, you got the sensation it was never meant to end this way. He was meant to be bullying elite defences at top stadiums forever, not blasting one in unmarked in front of only a handful of onlookers.
As Adriano turns 40, his time at the top feels a lifetime away.
His final Serie A season came with the likes of Francesco Totti and Daniele de Rossi at Roma, while the last of his 48 international caps came as part of a side containing Kleberson, Lucio and Gilberto Silva.
However, while fans might have moved on and found new heroes, few will tire of watching old clips of Adriano at his unstoppable best.
In 2021, it was announced that a documentary about his life had been commissioned, but for now we're happy watching The Emperor leathering the ball into the back of the net like there was no tomorrow.
