Latest / The On Purpose Podcast / Ep. 357 - Pietro Deserti: From Bullied to Unbreakable

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Ep. 357 - Pietro Deserti: From Bullied to Unbreakable · The On Purpose Podcast

• speaker-0: You are listening to the On Purpose Podcast. Hey friends, Jared Hardy here. If you've been inspired by what we talk about on the On Purpose Podcast, it's time to take it to the next step. My Excellence and Leadership course is built for individuals, teams, and organizations ready to lead with clarity, accountability, and purpose. Whether you're running a business, leading a squad, or just leveling up personally, let's work together. You can book me for custom classes or speaking engagements and we'll build something that lasts. Visit teamhardy dot net to learn more and take action today. What's up everybody? Welcome to this week's edition of the On Purpose Podcast, where you know it's our job to get you thinking, get you moving, get you what do we say, just wonder, man, am I getting the most out of my day today? Get you reflecting on man, can I be a little bit better? If I'm feeling good today, can I help somebody else out around me? And today I'm super pumped to be talking with our guest all the way from Brazil. Pietro Deserte, who grew up in a rural part of Brazil, spent his early years navigating bullying and finding confidence through sports. But I'm betting a lot of you right now are like, ⁓ he's from Brazil, he's finding a sport, he's gonna be playing soccer, but it's gonna surprise you the route he took. And today, he's a husband, a father, a teacher. And how I found him is he's a host of a World War II podcast. inspired by his family's history and his lifelong interest in the lesser known stories of the war. So Pietro, my man, welcome to the show. speaker-1: ⁓ well. ⁓ thank you very much ⁓ for having me today. ⁓ it's a big pleasure to be here because well for many reasons, but the the when I saw the Jenny ⁓ came here and ⁓ had that amazing conversation with you, it was like, man, that show's awesome. Like the people who are going there. Yeah, the things you're talking to, like the way you just introduced the thing, like make people think, you know, that's that's awesome. So I'm really glad. ⁓ it all worked out for me to be here with you ⁓ today. And ⁓ hello everyone. ⁓ so ⁓ I'm gonna introduce myself from here. as you were saying, ⁓ Jared, I'm from Brazil. I was born although my name is Italian. ⁓ I was born in Brazil because I've I I believe many of you know we have a big Italian community here in Brazil. My grandfather was part of it. But anyway, so I was born in a small city called Araras, which would translate literally to Macal. You know, the bird, the Macall, the red, there's red blue. Yeah. So for many years we didn't have Macalls in the city of Aradas, Macals, but now they're back. ⁓ so it's it's an amazing place, it's a small ⁓ town, very rich place, but My grandparents were all ⁓ very poor people. ⁓ some of them, as I was saying, came from Europe, from Italy. ⁓ my grandmother, from my father's side, my grandmother came from Spain. she was a baby when her family fled the Spanish Civil War back in the 30s. I went to Granada, the city where she was born, to visit the place. ⁓ but anyway, so my grandfather, my father's father, ⁓ came came in the fifth ⁓ in the in the early fifties to Brazil ⁓ because of World War Two. I think we're gonna get there. and for my mom's ⁓ side and that's I I always talk about my father's family because of the war. And ⁓ my grandfather is somewhere over here. There's a picture of him. but my family, my mother's family played of course it's obvious, a a very important ⁓ role in my in my in my life. Because ⁓ besides of all the sports and everything, I was always a musician and I always enjoyed like handcrafting things, especially woodworking. So and that all comes from my mom's side because they were all born in a farm. A farm that I would visit like until very recently. But now it's all closed. They're ⁓ someone bought it, shut it down. speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah, that happens. All right, Pietro, I gotta warm you up, dude. This is like I want you to think about like a sports practice. I just don't get you practicing and go go right to it. I wanna warm you up a little bit. You ready for some warm-up questions? All right, Pietro, if your life had a theme song, what would your song be? speaker-1: Yeah, go ahead. my way, Elvis Presley. speaker-0: ⁓ some Elvis. speaker-1: Yeah, I believe so. I all every time I listen to that song I'm like, Yeah, I did it my way, man. I literally did it my way in everything I did. speaker-0: What about a favorite book? speaker-1: Favorite book. Okay, I could Trade I had like The Lord of the Rings. But a book some books changed my life. ⁓ some stoic books, some Seneca's and stuff like that. But this book right here, can by Ken Foley, ⁓ The Eye of the Needle, ⁓ I almost I almost had to do some years of high school again because I was reading this like non stop. I read this book like ten times. I don't know. So probably like this one and Lord of the Rings both are speaker-0: Yeah, what was it about that book that kept you coming back to it? speaker-1: ⁓ this one, ⁓ yeah, World War II, man. I it's I think it shows well to me nowadays it's different because I've been studying and I've been ⁓ going really deep into World War II. ⁓ I think we're gonna talk quite a bit about it. But this book brought me to another aspect of the war, which was like spies and how spies can how intelligence can change war, like how important it is. Because I'm not gonna tell what happens in the book, but the eye of the needle, it is literally like the how can I say like the physical space that a spy has to to go through with that information without being caught, you know? So the book is all about it, like this this these like s not only spies, but all these military people and all the that that thing that's not related to combat, you know, it's It's intelligence. So that's I think that what that's what caught me there. It relates a lot a lot to somehow to to American football, ⁓ where intelligence is something important, really important. speaker-0: Yeah. All right, Pietro. What's a small habit you've been doing that's been giving you energy lately? speaker-1: ⁓ lately it's posting, I think, on my Instagram. That's something I've been doing. ⁓ and mostly because Ca a couple of months ago in January, no February, ⁓ early February, I lost a big friend of mine who was a Brazilian Expeditionary Force ⁓ writer. He was the his name is Cesare Maximiano Campiani, right? Cesar Campioni. He was the best, the greatest ⁓ Brazilian Expeditionary Force writer, because he was one of the only ⁓ researchers about these topic that actually met and leaving with the veterans themselves when they were still young and he could take them to Italy. And but just to to to give you perspective, it's very different because Americans, you guys had like hundreds of thousands of people fighting the war. We had only 25,000. So there wasn't a lot of people to be talking about. So when he passed away. One of my friends who is ⁓ who's the daughter of a veteran, she said, listen, it's up to you guys, the young guys, to bring the voices of the soldiers to the world. And I I I'm already doing this ⁓ show and everything since ⁓ 2020, so it's not recent. But I was posting about a lot of stuff. About everything. And now I'm posting about the Brazilian Expedition Air Force, and that's giving me a lot of noise. speaker-0: ⁓ that's good. speaker-1: motivation to keep posting 'cause people comment and it it gives a sense of purpose, you know. speaker-0: I'm gonna come back to you on now and that's a good one, Pietro. I wanna talk about that again. ⁓ what's a quote or a mantra that sticks in your heart? speaker-1: First of all, those are great questions, man. ⁓ thank thank you. I like this ⁓ quote is there are two quotes actually that really like that I would like to bring. ⁓ the first one is associated, it's related to von Clausewitz, a great war mastermind, but I'm not really sure if it's his ⁓ quote quotation, this quote, but ⁓ it says no plan survives under enemy fire. Right. So ⁓ I always have I always like to have that in mind when I'm preparing mys myself to action. Meaning getting ready for a class or for an interview or I don't know, whatever. Always have in mind no plan survives ⁓ under artillery fire, under enemy fire. Right. Right. And the second is for Marcus Aurelius. speaker-0: Yeah speaker-1: ⁓ it says we suffer more in imagination than in reality. And I always like to think about that because I think it's so real. Like we're always like imagining creating things in our minds that are not necessarily real. They might be, why not, but not necessarily, right? So I think, yeah, those two are the ones. speaker-0: I love it. All right, one final warm-up question for you, my friend. What is a word? One word to describe the season of life you're in now. speaker-1: Family that's the word. ⁓ sorry. I I am extremely dedicated to my family ⁓ for many reasons, but I really want my son to thrive, to be someone conscious and someone who's smart and makes good decisions. I know that in order to get there, you need to make a lot of mistakes and get yourself hurt a lot, but I want him to achieve that. And I want to achieve ⁓ I want to work really hard with my wife for us to have a comfortable life and a beautiful place where we can get old together and enjoy life the way it should be enjoyed. Right. So family is the word for sure, a hundred percent. speaker-0: Good job. Yeah, you're feeling warmed up, Pietro? speaker-1: ⁓ yeah, those are good questions, man. Thank you. Those are awesome. You wanna you wanna talk about some ⁓ American football? speaker-0: You want to talk about some football. Yeah, let's let's go here. Let's start here, right? You mentioned when when we met pre-show and and researching you that bullying shaped kind of how you saw yourself as a youngster and that football kind of changed that and started giving you confidence. So talk us through that early relevation of like what you were working through and how you even found American football, 'cause here's ⁓ you know, here's what I know about Brazil. Soccer or football is king. And then I've been doing Brazilian Jiu Jitsu for over twenty some years. Yeah, there you go. You got the pitch. Right. And then Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, I almost ever all the Brazilians I met is through Brazilian Jiu Jitsu or mixed martial arts. So I those are the two pr you know, Muay Thai, Valeturo, those are big things. And you found American football. speaker-1: And still I really enjoy Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Valitudo, MMA. I really like that as well. But yeah, so this is Brazil, right? And for us to start this conversation, we need to decide either we're gonna call it soccer or football. ⁓ In my opinion, it's all good to call it soccer. I think there is no problem at all. I'm an English teacher, just for people to know. So I teach both when I'm teaching kids, and I'm currently teaching my kids about soccer because of the World Cup. ⁓ so I don't care ⁓ calling it ⁓ soccer, although ⁓ when you go abroad and it doesn't matter where you go, either it's it's like in Asia and South Korea, like it was ⁓ last year, or if you go to of of course, mainly Europe we'll call it football. But even in South Korea they call it football. And it felt weird to me because I was living with Americans when I was ⁓ living in Spain. I I lived in Spain for a year. And we would call it soccer at home because they were Americans. But outside we would we would call it football. So it was really weird. ⁓ but just for the sake of comprehension and understanding here, I'm gonna call it soccer, okay? Because your audience is American, so let's go with it. And I'll call American football football. But for you guys to understand, here outside of the US, we call it American football. Because it is American and it's very American. very American. And that's why I speak English actually, but we're gonna get there. ⁓ so I am a huge fan of football ⁓ soccer, sorry. I'm a huge fan of soccer. And I'm a Corinthians supporter, ⁓ which is a huge ⁓ team here in Sao Paulo where I live ⁓ right now. ⁓ my son already supports it's it's it is tradition, it goes ⁓ within the family, the team you support. ⁓ we are fanatics, ⁓ it's very hard to talk about that because ⁓ sometimes it is a problem, right? Yeah, but yeah, we're fanatics, we debate. Soccer all the time. It is a Brazilian thing. And I grew up playing soccer as any other boy ⁓ would grow. but I was a chubby guy. I was ⁓ my mom my mom got divor my my parents broke up when I was ⁓ eight, nine, and I was ⁓ a chubby boy and I was a little fat and and and and people would mock me. This is like the early nineties, right? So People were not talking about bullying. That was part of life. And I was a good kid. I wasn't like thinking about violence at all or like competition. That wasn't something in my mind. I really like ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, ⁓ schools of mystery, ⁓ science and magic, and sorcery, and the Lord of the Rings. speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: You know, all that stuff. I really liked cartoons like Pokemon and all the things, but I was interested in in in that f in those very weird things like the pyramids, how did they build the pyramids and all that? And that came from my parents. But anyways, I was bullied a lot because of that. Because I was I wasn't into regular stuff. I I had friends who were also into weird stuff. And they're still my friends, by the way, like thirty years later. But anyway, so speaker-0: Right. speaker-1: My first contact with ⁓ soccer came when I was already eight. So my mom thought it was a good idea to put me to practice some sports 'cause I wasn't in shape. and it started really bad. It was pretty screwed up. I first ball they they they passed towards me. I put my hand to stop it. And the entire the entire like team they were mocking and laughing at me. Like, what is this stupid dude is doing, man? He's putting his hands into the into the football. Onto the football. And I was like, I don't want to do it, man. I don't want to do it. I I'm gonna be bullet here. I'm gonna be bullet at school. What? What what's the point of it? I don't want to do it. But that soccer team was In a very special school. I'm not gonna not gonna get into the details, but it was different. Just to give an example, we would plant what we ate. So that that's the kind of school I was in. It was kind of traditional. There was classrooms and chairs and everything. It was normal, but there were some ⁓ outside projects that were amazing. Soccer was one them. So the coach decided that. He was not letting me go, man. And and and and he came into one of my classes ⁓ the day after, I don't remember, but he he talked me in, he talked me back. So I was okay, I'm gonna play. And then he said. You have the structure, the body of someone who could defend. And I was like, so what should I do? So teach me, right? Coach me. And he did it. And this guy, his guy's name was Juárez, and he played for Vasco da Gama. It's a big team here. Not not like it's a historical team. Not nowadays it's big, but it's ⁓ I I would mock people, but I don't think Pascu fans will watch this. But anyways. ⁓ and he was a defender, this this coach. So he taught me really well on how to use my body. So my body that was something bad and was getting me names, now was helping me to shove people around. and I I I wasn't a very good player, ⁓ never was. speaker-0: Well I speaker-1: Could play again. So I started to play when I was eight. And then when I was nine, and then when I was 10, Brazil became a world champion for the fifth time. This was back in 2002. And this is when I fought I fell in love with the sport. This is where the tattoo ⁓ I always thought about the four lines, you know, everything that happened inside of the four lines is magical. Soccer is a sport that The underdog can always beat the the the best team, you know. You can score a goal in a foul, in a corner. You never know the put something wrong, something bad can happen to the best team, and then the underdogs can have the ball and score a goal, and then put the 11 players into the box and just defend it for ⁓ you know 45 minutes and whatever and win the game. And it's magical. You know, that's why it's so magical. But it all ⁓ changed. In 2005, when I was playing soccer for the school, I was really into it. ⁓ I was a goalkeeper by then. And this also comes together with the same time when I watched a band of brothers for the first time and I started to exercise and I was like, I gotta be a soldier, man. It's like my grandfather, go to war and shit. But because my my ⁓ the the The United States was fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. And this is when YouTube starts to to to to be like the YouTube we know. And I started to see videos from the Battle of Fallujah and and and all of that. I was like, dude, I want to be there. I wanna go. I don't be I wanna be like those guys. You know? So I started to go to Jim and me and my friends, we had this vibe of going to the wild. With just our backpacks, our bikes, and camping for like three or four days. ⁓ we would not starve because there were plantations like orange, sugarcane, so we would not die. We knew where there was water and everything, but we would go there into the wild, put our tents outside and fish and and and and we can't hunt because guns are absolutely forbidden here in Brazil. ⁓ this is a replica, by the way. If people are can see it, it's just a replica of ⁓ ninete ⁓ eleven. It's not a real bag. You can't have it at all. So we we would not hunt. But we would fish and collect stuff and I'll be out there just like soldiers and pretending to there was like Survivor Man and Bear Grails and all those guys out there as well. So we we we really liked it. But in one of those trips, why I'm telling you this, because in one of those trips we we were riding our bikes and we crashed. really hard, like really hard. One of my friends almost lost an eye. ⁓ he's okay, he's doing well, but he hit a how can I say it? It's like a it's like a dirt wall man. He hit this dirt wall with his his face and I hit with my shoulder. So I broke my collarbone. My clavicule was broken right about here. So I couldn't play soccer. And I was at home watching TV, the ESPN, and the Cardinals were playing the Bears. And I was like, wait, wait a minute, what is it? And the damage was already done. I was like totally into it. Totally into it. I was like, this game is a it's a it's a smart game. It is a very physical game. I'm gonna use my body again. I'm gonna hit people. so this is when the switch starts to turn from being bullied to bully people to be like, okay, I can hit these guys now. Yeah, I can I can give it back to them. not that it's it's it's not a good thing, but I could, so it was good. so I watch this game, I go to the school the next morning. One of my best friends, ⁓ Cadu who now lives in in the UK, ⁓ I I tell him about that. I watched this game yesterday, man, and I really liked it, but I I don't really understand it. I need to learn. Do you know? Like, got to remember this is two thousand and five. There wasn't a single word about football in Portuguese. There wasn't. If it if there was, it was lost in the south of Brazil with the first guy like the pioneers who tried to build a team in the the late 80s, early nineties, never really worked out, but we didn't know like anything about that. ⁓ never seen a ball before or anything. So so this guy, Cadu says, there's this young, younger ⁓ Kid called Renato, and he has a ball. I don't know if he knows how to play, but I've seen him with a ball. So I think you should talk to him. I was like, okay. So we have we had the our ⁓ lunch break in in school. So I went to this kid, and he's like two years younger than me, and he was like surprised that someone older than him. ⁓ was coming to talk and being like, dude, teach me this. Yeah, ⁓ it's like I think it was one of the first times in my life I wasn't being like extremely humble and I didn't know I was so I was just asking for help. It's like dude teach me. And indeed this guy was my first teacher in in football. ⁓ he knew how to throw he knew how to play he knew the rules he knew the basic formations the positions And we started a team. ⁓ that that that that ⁓ survived for twenty years. It ended like in the pen in the pandemic. speaker-0: How did you get other kids to want to play football? speaker-1: Because yeah, so what happens is we started our own team in a club, in a sports club in Aradas, and we learned that some other guys were playing in a in a city next to our so we played a game against them. When we played against them at the end of the game, I went to their like their leader, because there wasn't like the coach or president or anything. It was just like 15-year-old kids playing ball, no pads, ⁓ just like really dangerous. Stuff ⁓ to be honest. so I tell I I I come to this guy and I say, dude, listen, I have like 11 guys, you have like 15 guys. If we get together, we can play games in the capital, we can go to the big city and try to play against those guys. What do you think? And these guys were as hyped as we were, so they're like, freaking yeah, let's do it, let's go. So when I was 15, I managed to get a bus, a set of uniforms, numbered, a someone who's responsible for the team, ⁓ who was a very crazy guy who passed away already, the father of one of my best friends. ⁓ but he was like, Yeah, I'm down to it. And we came to Sao Paulo and we played a big team here, and we we bit the crap out of them. We scored 50 points, so they scored Zero. So this game changed my life as well because it it put our team under the radar of bigger fish that were observing us, right? So this is how it all starts. This is crazy, right? Yeah. speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah, no, it's good for you for seeing an opportunity and following through and gathering resources to make it happen and then sharing it with people. speaker-1: So the kids, the like the kids who who were playing with us were mostly the renegated from other sports as well. Right? And later, later, ⁓ me and this Henatu guy, when we were already like 17, like like two or three years later, ⁓ we would go to the supermarkets in the city and be at the back of the supermarkets at the dock. You know, where where there are guys unloading the trucks. So we would come to these guys and say, dude, do you want to play football? And these these were like very poor kids. This is Brazil, right? It's very it's a it's a people people in Europe and in the US people say ⁓ there's poverty here as well. It's like I know. But it's not the same. Here it's ⁓ it's insane. It's so these guys were very poor people. And we were not only giving them the chance to play a sport, but also to learn English, but also to to play abroad, to to get a D3 scholarship in the US. It happened, you know. So this is we we never thought about that. We always wanted to win, to build the best teams and everything. but we were honestly, we were a bunch of white kids. Trying to do something that alone in the sense that if we were not integrating the entire community into it, and this is something I learned really early. Like in order to make a football team, any team to thrive, you need this community working. it's just like in the military, I think. You've got you have the guys fighting the war, but you have all these people behind pushing the war effort. ⁓ You know, towards victory. So yeah, we put the entire city around it. When I go to my city, I am Pietro from American American football. ⁓ that's Pietro from American football. You know him. So that's who I am. It's still it's been ten years since I quit football and still they call me that. speaker-0: What was your greatest success from that journey? When you look back on it and you go, you know what, this is the thing I'm most proud of. What would that be? speaker-1: ⁓ my friendships, the the guys I met, the guys I shared ⁓ hell with, ⁓ probably like ⁓ that there are there's one guy in particular, I'm gonna bring him up because I think he deserves it. He was a renegated running back in ⁓ in a city near Aradas. I wasn't coaching Aradas anymore, I was coaching Lamy. What is which which is a fifteen minutes driving from Aradas. So some guys from Araras went to Leme. Leme is another city that got a lot of investment in the in the team. So I don't know if you if you look it up, you're gonna see that they have a professional football team in a very it's smaller than Araras. But anyways, I was coaching that team and this guy went there. It was the like I signed the contract on Monday. On Tuesday, I was I was ⁓ at the practice. And the president of the team came to me and said, Man, look, you see those guys up there? it's the father and the son, and the son plays ⁓ football for Limera, who's city nearby. They want to play with us. So it's your job to go there and talk to them and see what it's all about and see. It's like okay. So I I go and talk to these kids. I'm telling you this because I'm really proud of this story. Because this guy was nothing. He was a running back, the third running back of a very bad team. And then he comes, he comes to our program and he says, I want to be a quarterback. And I said, All right, so you are. And he he was like, just like that. I was like, what were you expecting? If you're telling me you're you're you're QB1, you're QP1, man. I don't know. I'm new here. So So whatever, let's let's take this right together. Let's work as hard as we can to win. If winning is what you're looking for, let's let's go, you know. So he lives really happy. His father is like almost in tears because I think ⁓ they were going to quit. I think it was his last ⁓ attempt to to do something, and he was going all in, like I wanna be QB, I wanna throw the ball. Let me do it. So I spent the first entire season. I think this is ⁓ two thousand fourteen. This is fourteen. so we have QB1 playing, great kid, was playing well, and we have ⁓ Iago as our second QB and my Jew, because I was I was I was ⁓ coaching him, I was transforming him, I was getting all those almost ten years of football into him. For him to to to be QB one the next season. And I'm the head coach, so whatever, I'm the one who's gonna call it anyways. So fifteen comes in, and QB one is a ⁓ QB QB two, Yago, my man, is a monster here. He runs like Michael Vick, throws like Patrick Mahomes, you know, on the run, falling, making all that magic happen. Some sort of Mahomes and Jalen Hart's kind of style. Text the ball really well. It's not afraid of anything. It's like, okay, this guy's ready. Let's get the old guy out. Make him our offensive coordinator. And let's put Iago to play. And it didn't happen because they brought an Italian head coach. ⁓ I'm not gonna say his name, but he was a legend in Italy. ⁓ there's a very good book called Playing for a Pizza. It's a fiction book about football. But this guy played for the Bergamo Lions. The Bergamo Lions held a record of 200 or something games undefeated. So these guys were the real deal during the 90s in Italy. ⁓ so this guy comes, he's a legend, everybody news to him. And I didn't. I was like, sorry, but like screw this guy. I'm not bending my knees to some freaking Italian who just arrived here. It's like, no, not gonna happen. So it breaks the team in half. I have some some people following me, some people following the guy. One day I decide to quit. And ⁓ I tell Iago to stay. I say, man, you stay, you'll be here, you finish the season here. Don't worry. I'm gonna say that the main point of this is because Iago was black. And this Italian guy who I don't want to say the name was super racist. So I don't wanna make this victim stuff and blah blah but but but that was it was a real situation. But anyways, Iago leaves at the end of the year, I leave at the half of the the half of the year, and when I leave I get invited by the Murcia Cobras, the cobras from Murcia and Spain to coach their quarterbacks. And that's when I realized, all right, this is the real deal. I'm gonna be a professional. You know, this is gonna happen. I'm going abroad, I'm gonna leave abroad, I'm gonna coach a team in Spain. And I was telling you the story of Iago because he was a quarterback. It was my work with him that made him QB ⁓ two in the national br the Brazilian national team a couple of years ago. speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: So he was a a bad running back, and he became the second best quarterback in Brazil before the pandemic. ⁓ so it's a great story. So I go to Spain and I coach in Spain, and we are champions in Spain. We are second division champions in Spain. And the story is that we had no quarterback. My first practice in Spain, Alejandro Sotomayor, who's like one of the biggest coaches. In Spanish American football for football, he comes to me and says, Brother, we have no QBs. Good luck. I was like, what are you talking about? It's like we don't have it. We usually bring an American guy to play for us, but this year, no budget, Brazilian coach, it's gonna solve the problem. It's like, okay, let's do it. have in mind you're gonna run the ball a lot. But yeah, that's what's gonna happen. That's what we did. We ran the ball with everybody. receivers, running backs, full backs, tight ends, road quarterbacks, everyone ran the ball. speaker-0: Yeah, that's the story. Yeah, dude. You know, listening to that, what I hear is you you got somebody to believe in themselves because you believed in them. You didn't put limits. When he when he said he wanted to be a quarterback, you didn't say no, you're a running back. Like you you you said, okay, if that's what you want to be and you're willing to work hard, you can do it. And I think so many people Just need a little bit of encouragement like that at some moment in our life. They don't need somebody to tell them why they can't do it, how hard it's gonna be, are you willing to work all like just say, yeah, you can do it. And then here's the plan to get you there. speaker-1: The thing is I think it's important to mention I never cut my players because yeah, you you you can be lazy as heck, but you're gonna be sitting at the back and that's it. I'm not cutting you. You're gonna be there suffering, watching success happening in front of your eyes. So my experience tells me that most of these guys who are not ready, they quit, they go away. They don't get involved with the beauty of success. So they quit. So I never quit a player in my entire life. Never. Never, never, never. Always always believed they could be something. ⁓ But I've never built systems for players either. So it was always about who do you want to be in our group? And this because again, like I said at the beginning, no plant survives in their enemy fire, man. when when the firework starts to crack, man, ⁓ it's the guy next to you who's gonna who's gonna get your your back, you know? So you need to trust those guys. And this is the kind of work this is more than football. This is for life, right? So this is what I s what I always believed in. It's like you wanna win. All right. There's a lot of things we can do to win. We can study flex bone formation and wishbone formation and all those passes and and routeries and and you know juke moves and we can go to the gym three times every day and work but in the end when you're gonna face other guys who are who can also go to the gym who who can also search on youtube for for ⁓ classes about these ⁓ philosophy of game or that philosophy of game or you can they can watch they can watch your games you can watch their games that that's equalized What's not equalized is your heart. It's how how much you want to win, how much you want to compete, and how much you love your friends. Cause if you love your friends, you're gonna fight for them, you're gonna practice harder, you're gonna study harder, right? You don't wanna be embarrassed in front of them. You know and you wanna let them down. So I have many crazy stories of like speaker-0: Just part of it now. Right. speaker-1: Exposing players who were ⁓ having bad behavior. And it always goes like this guy's what this guy, this guy was at the bar yesterday when we were practicing. I'm not cutting him. So he's gonna be here if he wants to. And and and and the guy would say, ⁓ why you're exposing me? It's like I'm not exposing you. You're exposing yourself. I'm just letting your friends know what kind of guy you you are. So if you wanna change, there you go. Here's your your opportunity to to be reborn, man. This is it, you know. speaker-0: Well, and especially what I I loved hearing their PA throw is you're talking about marginalized people within Brazilian society, right? You're talking about people that are already being kind of pushed out. They're they're used to people giving up on them. And I share that with a lot of parents, right? And I share that with coaches of teenagers in America. Is a lot of times teenagers are gonna push against you, especially if they're from rough childhoods, because they're used to adults quitting on them. So the sooner I push hard against you, if you're one of those, you're gonna quit. So then it's just faster for me. But what they're really seeking is who is that person that won't quit on me, which also means then I don't quit on myself. And that's what I hear from you is you took those you young men in and you said, No, I'm not quitting on you. You made a mistake, you were at the bar yesterday instead of practice. Guess what? You're still part of the team. Will you do it again today or are you gonna show up? Right? Because these guys are counting on you. speaker-1: ⁓ all that yeah. And that's and all right, this is this ⁓ makes me actually have never had the opportunity to talk about this publicly like this. It's the first time. I always talk about World War Two, about the Brazilian Expeditionary Force. But yeah, but yeah, ⁓ I mean People, the thing is that most of the most of the the guys who were in these ⁓ American football teams, they were not professional players. I think it's important to to highlight that. They played for the love of the sport. So it wasn't money, it wasn't success itself that drove ⁓ those guys. So it was the love for what we were doing. I remember I remember ⁓ the best some of the best moments we had were in the buses traveling around Brazil. And I remember being in the bus and reflecting with Henato, my friend. like dude, we put like the richest kid of the city with these guys who were unloading trucks yesterday at the supermarket, and they're good friends now and they're speaker-0: Sure. speaker-1: interacting and you're sharing experiences together and ⁓ the challenge and this is what i was ⁓ getting to the challenge for me was to realize my place in that in that community right that was the struggle because speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: I was bullied, there was a lot of issues, and my family is by no means traditional. ⁓ I am nowadays I'm more conservative, I'm cr I'm a Catholic Christian, I go to the church, ⁓ I have this ⁓ mindset, but I got my first tattoo at O was sixteen. That was shocking to society ⁓ back there in Aradas. ⁓ My family wasn't by no means again traditional ⁓ a fa familiar like the family from Arais, not at all. So I also suffered quite a bit because of that. But that was what made me make my way, like I said about the song. I was like, whatever, it's all screwed up anyways. So let's be a leader, let's show up, let's try to do it. If there will be an American football team, if there will ever be a football team here, it's up to me. Nobody's gonna do it. My father was really pissed because he was like, ⁓ this is what you're investing your life in? Football in Brazil? That kind of sucks, dude. You know, I'm investing money on you and you're doing that. So it was really hard to convince him that was something. But it was a decision I made to sit That place and be that guy to my players, and honestly, I was inspired by movie characters, yeah. You know, like Denzel Washington in the Remember the Titans, or ⁓ I think it's Matthew McConnelly on the We Are Marshall, and this fictional characters, ⁓ because ⁓ you know. And this is where I got this. I'm not cutting players. I'm I'm I'm believing everyone. This is where I got this from. Yeah. You know, it wasn't I wasn't reading Lou Holes. I wasn't reading, I don't know, ⁓ Tony Danji. speaker-0: Interesting Pietro is too so many times in life, and you know, I've coached a lot of different aspects of life, and many times in life we think we're coaching a thing, right? Like in the moment, you think you're teaching football, you're coaching football. But what you just said there is something that I hope our community takes away. Anytime to get involved and just spending time with other people, the thing you're actually doing. Doing is the least important thing. The most important is the time you are giving them. And right, you created a place on a bus where the richest kid and the poorest kids are equal. So they can learn about each other. I can learn to gain respect about the kid that maybe I look down upon, or they can understand, ⁓ he's rich, but he still has problems. Right, too many times we get caught up thinking about the thing. ⁓ I'm coaching basketball, I'm coaching mixed martial arts, I'm coaching football, I'm teaching English. That's the thing, but what you're really doing is changing lives. speaker-1: Man, you just said something awesome because like when I teach English, I always tell the parents, ⁓ English is the is the easy thing. You know, English is the least of my problems. Everybody can learn English. people here in my country, they are challenged by this challenge of learning a new language. It is hard. You you gotta study, you gotta work yourself really hard to achieve these levels of English. I'm really Proud of my English. ⁓ But and I and I think I should be. I wasn't. But now that I have the show that I interview all these people, that I'm here talking to you, and it doesn't even bother me the fact that I'm speaking a different language. It makes me feel proud. But, anyways, when I'm teaching these kids English, what I'm looking for is actually there, and this is okay, it I want to teach them how to learn. Right? Because I want to teach them to sit down, to pay attention, and not necessarily English. I want them to go like today, like today, I took my all my groups and I teach from nursery to group five, which is five years old. I took all of the groups besides of nursery. ⁓ to the court for us to play soccer because it's World Cup. So I'm teaching the ball, the bars, the box, the ball, kick, pass, head, all of that. So it's not English anymore. English is there. We talked about English, but it's not about English anymore. It's about the World Cup. It's about soccer. It's about how we're gonna. behave with our friends in order to make this a challenge, this activity work for us to win or to achieve something. I always give them challenges because I feel my students are not challenged enough by life because their lives are really ⁓ I'm not criticizing this is not I'm not criticizing my my son's life is really cool as well. But I'm not saying your kids need must have rough lives. No, it's not that. But they need to be challenged. they they they they you gotta allow them to be frustrated right I do a lot of that because my students they are they are the precious kids of rich families very rich families and they're great kids ⁓ great families great kids they're everybody's concerned about their education but nowadays I feel like there's this resistance to To allow your kids to be frustrated. Just make them feel it. Allow them to feel it. Don't protect them. And during my class, I'm just the English teacher of the school. I'm with them 40 minutes every day. It's only 40 minutes every day. Out of the 24 hours they have. Let's say like their 12 hours going up and down. They have 40 minutes with me. And I try to make them. work themselves out in difficult situations, simulated difficult situations. So tell me how we're gonna get this ball to that goal, to that that to that box without touching it with your hands? How are you gonna do it? Some kids never did it because the they're not from the same reality as the poor kids who play soccer around like the the Islums on the streets and everything. So they they grow up in apartments. So I'm giving them the chance to feel that. Sometimes to walk walk bare feet. They they they wear shoes all the time. So walk bare feet. We live in Sao Paulo, man. This is a twenty something million people city. It's insane. If you look through the window here it's just like beauties. It's like New York or something like that. Yeah. So these kids are apartment kids and they try to do that. speaker-0: Pietro, it's been awesome having you on the show. We didn't even talk about the war, my friend. We just talked about Pietro, the human being, which I love. speaker-1: Yeah man, I think I think ⁓ it is very good to be able to talk about football here and the things I did with football because I don't have the opportunity to do it. So World War II is my daily life. It's what I do every day. ⁓ so if people want to to follow me there, to to check out my work there, ⁓ you guys are more than welcome. ⁓ and I'm always open to come ⁓ to another absolute man. I'm always up to it. speaker-0: Where can our audience find your podcast? What what is it called, Pietro? speaker-1: ⁓ it is the World War II Daily Podcast. ⁓ you're gonna find us basically everywhere YouTube, Spotify, Apple, Deezer, Amazon, and some other platforms. I I don't even knew we were there, but last week I saw a website where I can track all the platforms my show is in, and apparently it's over like 20 something platforms. So, yeah, the World War II Daily Podcast. ⁓ on Instagram you're gonna find us ⁓ at world war i underscore daily. we are active daily, so it's daily world war two information. speaker-0: What's ⁓ what's something you hope our community takes from our conversation today, Pietro? speaker-1: From our conversation specifically, I think people should take find your place in your community. ⁓ nowhere don't don't be don't be angry when things are not working for you. You know, it's just a moment, it's gonna go away. And find where you can contribute to Society in general. I mean, start with the small things, your community, your family, your house, you know, be similar. I always say that, man, to my students. If you're gonna leave your bed in the morning to do bad stuff, to be mean, to be bad, just stay in your bed. Don't leave it, because we have already enough trouble. If you're gonna leave your bed, smile, put your shoes on, change. Get yourself happy, put a smile on your face and go inspire other people. Go make the world better. ⁓ because there's a lot of people trying to drag it down. So be the difference. Find your place. You know, that gear that helps all the other gears to to to turn and make the whole machine work better. That's where you have to be. That's what we've got to do. speaker-0: Pietro, my friend, it's been awesome having you on the show. I'm so thankful for you, our time together, and for the work you're doing to make the world a better place. Keep keep doing it, my friend. speaker-1: Thank you very much, man. I appreciate the opportunity once more. I thank you very much. It's unfortunate that that it's over because it I was really enjoying this. ⁓ it's very different from talking about the Holocaust or Japanese atrocities in the Pacific. But yeah, so thank you very much. I'm always open for ⁓ new interviews in the future. and thank you for your work, man. ⁓ what you do is amazing. Your show is fantastic. ⁓ I follow you more, I'll be honest, like more on Instagram. And the cuts are really awesome. Like what people see. What you say, you're you're true smart, you're a really smart guy. I really like it. speaker-0: Pietro, my friend, we'll be in touch and thank you so much. speaker-1: Thank you very much. Bye bye. speaker-0: When you're training with purpose, your fueling can't be an afterthought. That's why I use Never Second, the simplest, most reliable system I have found for staying energized, hydrated, and steady through their long efforts. Their C-Series carbs take guesswork out of performance, no stomach drama, no complicated mixing, just clean, consistent fuel that actually works when the miles get long. If you want to train with more intention and recover without feeling wrecked, check out Never Second. Click the link in the show notes to get dialed in. And remember team, life is far too short to live any other way than on purpose. We will see you all again next week.