A Brazilian goalkeeper jailed for the murder of a former girlfriend has been released and is set to resume his football career.
Former Flamengo and Atletico Mineiro keeper Bruno Fernandes de Souza, once tipped to represent his country, has reportedly signed for second division club Boa Esporte after serving seven years of a 22-year sentence for the kidnap and murder of Eliza Samudio, whose body was reportedly fed to his dogs.
The "astounding" story is "part OJ Simpson trial, part Saw, part lurid reflection on the nature of impunity, celebrity and the inadequacies of a legal system", says Gabrielle Marcotti in The Times.
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It began in June 2009 when Bruno met Samudio, a 25-year-old model, and she became pregnant. Bruno attempted to intimidate her into having an abortion but she refused. She gave birth in 2010 but soon afterwards disappeared.
"A month later it emerged that Bruno – with the help of a number of people, including his wife, another former lover and a teenage cousin – had lured Samudio to his home. She was strangled to death, her body was dismembered and fed to his rottweiler dogs," reports Marcotti.
Bruno was sentenced to 22 years in jail. It was, he says, "an especially macabre and extreme version of the well-worn trope of a gifted and successful athlete throwing it all away due to a cocktail of ignorance, selfishness, immorality and the sense of omnipotence only fame and adulation can provide".
But the story has taken a twist with the news that Bruno has now been released on appeal, and will, at the age of 32, resume his career.
"Unsurprisingly, there has been an outcry, with one of their lead sponsors announcing they are ending their relationship with the club," says Marcotti, while the Daily Mirror reports that social media campaigns and petitions have been launched in protest at the move.
But for many Brazilians the main problem appears to be that Bruno is "not quite match fit", marvels Barney Ronay in The Guardian.
"What are we supposed to make of all this? Even football's slightly wonky register of values seems to have lost all sense of scale here," he writes.
"It seems baffling that while his appeal is in train Bruno should be out there playing football, apparently without resistance. A while back Fifa threatened the Brazilian FA with fines if its players wore T-shirts with slogans like I Belong To Jesus, or 100% Jesus or I Really Honestly Like Jesus. It seems clear the least they can do now is suggest very strongly that the world's most unwelcome late-blooming homicidal goalkeeper shouldn't be anywhere near a football pitch while justice is served."
Even more shocking is the fact that Bruno appears to be unrepentant, says Daniel Edwards of Goal.com. Bruno claims to have "paid dearly" and undergone a "learning experience" in jail.
"The story of Bruno is one of arrogance and impunity. Back in 2010, the goalkeeper appeared to believe that his status as a football rock star exempted him from following the laws and morality society needs to function in harmony, brutally killing an ex-lover because she threatened his perfect world with a dose of reality. His release after serving less than a third of his sentence is shameful, but even more aberrant is the decision to give him a second chance on the pitch when Eliza's blood remains on his gloved hands."
