It is a daunting name to live up to. Not Kenedy, but Nascimento. That is the surname Newcastle United’s new loan signing shares with his country’s greatest-ever player, Pele.
‘He is my uncle!’ announces Robert Kenedy Nunes Nascimento. He is joking.
‘But I know we share our name. He lived close to my city.’
Given the vast expanse of Brazil - 2,700 miles north to south - the fact the three-time World Cup winner was born just a couple of hours up the road from Kenedy’s hometown makes it plausible that an ancestral link does exist somewhere down the line.