Wendell Lira was a 27-year-old Brazilian striker who has had a claim to fame for winning the 2015 Puskas Award on a goal like this.
But Lira’s career has been filled with going from team to team, 11 in fact, over his nine year senior career. That plus injuries have resulted Lira to retire from real life soccer and has decided to concentrate on the virtual kind of soccer.
The growth of eSports, particularly within the FIFA video game, has been rapid and it’s still at a point where it’s still early enough to break into the industry under the right circumstances. Lira decided that now is the time to go into his second career, as a professional FIFA gamer and YouTube personality as he chronicles his journey in his new career.
Yeah, people may have joked years ago about making money by playing video games but it’s quickly become a serious business where the top gamers in the world can make a healthy living as well as be recognized worldwide. It’s even caused pro soccer teams to start and sign FIFA gamers in order to market the team as well as play as them in tournaments. Lira hopes to someday win the FIFA Interactive World Cup, a yearly tournament that recognizes the top FIFA gamer around the world.
Lira has apparently got the skills to make a run at a successful career. He took on 2015 World Cup winner Abdulaziz Alshehri and won 6-1. So maybe we will see Wendell Lira with a winners medal in something he didn’t expect to be doing when he started his soccer career.
