Arsenal star Gabriel Martinelli is set to complete his father's 14-year prediction that he will play at the 2022 World Cup.
The attacker has been included in the Brazil squad for the tournament in Qatar, which will be his first World Cup. Martinelli has starred for the Gunners in their charge to the top of the Premier League table in the first-half of this season.
His performances for Mikel Arteta's men have unsurprisingly earned him a place in Tite's group for football's most prestigious tournament. But well before he was starring for Arsenal, or even thinking of a professional career, Martinelli was being tipped to star at this year's World Cup.
The 21-year-old revealed in the summer that when he was a child, his dad believed he would be featuring at the tournament. Even at the age of seven, Martinelli's father was pushing him to play at the top level.
"It means a lot. I'm trying to do everything to go to the World Cup. Since I was seven when I start football, my dad said 'when you turn 21, we'll have a World Cup and you'll be playing'," he told Wrighty's House Podcast.
"Every single day, he was like '2022, we're gonna have a World Cup'. As I said, my dad was always talking to me about this. Of course, at that point, he didn't know that I was going to be a footballer."
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Martinelli has won three caps for Brazil so far, with the first coming against Chile back in March. He will link up with their squad in Turin next week following Arsenal's clash with Wolves on Saturday.
Brazil kick off their World Cup campaign on 24 November against Serbia, before clashes with Switzerland and Cameroon. Boss Tite took over in 2016, but has insisted his side's performance in the 2018 World Cup cannot be used as a basis for predicting this year's tournament.
“This should not be compared. That was a recovery cycle. Now it's an entire four-year process. It's unfair to make comparisons, it's unfair to athletes. We started in sixth place and had to win," he said.
"Now it was another situation. We had more time to work, we were able to do more tests and call more players. But you can't compare generations. I'm not saying that the team will win, but the team arrives stronger, more structured and humanly more involved, athletes know how we work.
"The team arrives firmer, stronger and more consistent for the World Cup. I respect dissenting opinions. I'm not here to convince people and I don't want that either. I just want to bring informative and truthful data so that everyone, democratically, has an opinion."
Brazil have won the World Cup five times, but have not lifted the famous trophy for two decades. That is a barren run they will hope to put to an end this year, having been knocked out at the quarter-final stage in Russia in 2018.
Martinelli does have experience of winning a tournament with his country, having helped Brazil's Under-23s to win the Olympics in Tokyo last year. He will hope to now go on to bring back the World Cup to his home country.
