In early 1991, an 18-year-old stood in a bakery in Paulista, a run-down region of Recife in northeastern Brazil, waiting to be interviewed by the local media.
He didn't really look like a football player.
Worryingly thin, with a washed-out shirt hanging on him and pants twisted up to the knees that showed serious symptoms of vitamin D deficiency, the reason for his crooked legs - oxerics.
His cheeks looked sunken, the result of having lost many of his teeth due to chronic malnutrition during his early adolescent years.
He made a lot of headlines in those days after scoring a stunning lob header on his debut for local club Santa Cruz.
Because of all this, the TV reporter sought him out, eager to talk with him about his future ambitions.
The modest young man answered him while taking a break from drinking fresh coconut milk:
"My dream has already come true, I played for Santa Cruz. I hope to achieve even more and become an idol for the club's fans."
Rivaldo, who turns 50 next April, has achieved much, much more than that.
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When he looks back on his career today, he not only greatly exceeded his own expectations, but also disproved the widely held belief that to be successful you must have big dreams.
Some ten years after this interview, he won the Ballon d'Or, was named the best player of the year, and scored what is considered the greatest hat-trick in the history of football for Barcelona.
He also lifted the trophy at the World Cup in 2002 as part of Brazil's deadly attacking line - Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Rivaldo.
A year later, he also won the Champions League with Milan.
Dream big, they say.
Unless your upbringing doesn't allow it.
"You have to live in poverty to know what poverty is," Rivaldo told Argentine football magazine El Grafik in 1999:
"You work all day to get very little, to be hungry and to suffer".
"It's hard to dream in Paulista".
The middle child of five, Rivaldo Vitor Borba Ferreira grew up on the outskirts of Recife, in a favela where tourists never go and where dreamers are considered crazy.
As a boy, he helped his parents on weekends by pulling weeds in their gardens and selling chewing gum and ice cream on the city's most popular beaches.
On the days when football matches were played, he would be in front of the Aruda Stadium, home of his beloved Santa Cruz.
Rivaldo's teachers describe him as a shy boy, too nervous to read aloud, but in any case better behaved than his two older brothers.
He enjoyed playing football barefoot.
He adored Zico and Maradona.
His friends recall that he was the most skilled with the ball and that he managed to control it as if it was glued to his foot.
He hit with surprising power for such a chubby kid.
But as much as he loved playing football, he also enjoyed catching grasshoppers and training roosters for fighting.
At the age of 13, Rivaldo received his first pair of football boots from his father Romildo.
He was invited to a trial training in Santa Cruz with his peers.
Two weeks before the scheduled training, Romildo was killed by being hit by a bus.
His son was distraught, ready to give up the game and finally surrender to his surroundings.
He was convinced that happiness and success were not meant for boys from his neighborhood.
Only after the intervention of his mother Marlusia, Rivaldo's life path changed direction.
She sat down next to him, looked into his eyes and said:
"Your father wanted you to become a professional football player more than anything in the world. Go ahead".
That's what he did.
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The training was successful, but soon new challenges appeared.
The fields where they trained were about 15 kilometers from his home, and since money was less than ever, Rivaldo had to walk 30 km to the field and back every day.
He arrived tired, he left tired - and his crooked legs were getting crooked.
Despite the dedication, the accolades were not forthcoming.
They were very strict with him - and that, especially in Brazil, would follow him for most of his career.
His early days in Santa Cruz were marked by inconsistent performances, and he quickly became the scapegoat for the team's poor results.
Neglected and under-respected, booed by the fans and forgotten by the manager, he was finally used in a player exchange with the second division club Mozhi Mirim from Sao Paolo.
João Cashero, the former president of Santa Cruz, later stated that it was "the worst transfer in the history of the club".
Rivaldo spent the next four years receiving many accolades, but still not receiving universal recognition for his work.
In Moži, he managed even what the great Pele failed to do - to score a goal from half the field.
He was on loan to Corinthians in 1993, when he scored 58 goals in 22 games and was named player of the season.
He also scored on his international debut against Mexico.
And yet, several times he left the stadium hidden in a bag of soccer balls - such was the pressure of the team's fans.
After moving from Sao Paulo to Palmeiras, he won the Brazilian championship in 1994 and was again named player of the year.
The good games that he provided continuously brought him new invitations to the national team, but in the end the coach Carlos Alberto Pereira decided that the 22-year-old was "too selfish" and "unreliable".
He left it in Brazil and won the title of world champion with the national team in 1994.
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1996 came, Pereira left, and Rivaldo was back in the national team at the Atlanta Olympics.
And again he was blamed for the failure.
Twelve minutes before the end of the semi-final against Nigeria, Brazil was leading 3:1, when Rivaldo lost the ball in the middle of the field, and the Africans scored.
Then they scored two more goals and eliminated the favorites.
Rivaldo missed another great chance to score, only to have a complete breakdown in the dressing room.
"The game against Nigeria was a huge shock for everyone in Brazil because the expectation was that we would bring home the gold medal," his former team-mate Luizao recalled to BBC Sport.
"Unfortunately, it was an unusual game and we were all sad - Rivaldo more than anyone else because he was criticized a lot.
He was a player who had a strong personality and great confidence."
When asked about it a few years later, Rivaldo said:
"I don't like to remember that period, but that event motivated me and convinced me that all those criticisms were wrong".
Coach Mario Zagallo, who was entrusted with leading Brazil at the World Cup in France in 1998, publicly dismissed any possibility of Rivaldo continuing to play for the national team.
But neither he, nor the other detractors, could even dream of what was about to happen.
And while it might be logical to conclude that this kind of seemingly unrelenting criticism led to Rivaldo seeking a move to Europe, the truth is that it was Palmeiras who sold him to Parma even before the 1996 Olympics.
Only after the failure of the negotiations between the two parties regarding the contract, he ended up in Spain instead of Parma.
Seven thousand fans of Deportivo la Coruña attended his presentation that summer in the hope that he would be the player to replace another Brazilian who was on the way out of the club - Bebet.
Rivaldo stayed in Galicia for only one year and experienced great personal success there.
He scored 21 goals in 41 games, and Deportivo broke through from the anonymity of the middle of the table to the third place in La Liga and tied with Barcelona on points, which was already carefully following the development of events.
The number of goals scored was not the only data that was noticed, there was also its diversity.
Undermining the ball, fierce headers, free kicks, devastating shots from distance and even a cheeky Panjenka penalty that almost missed.
But whenever he phoned home, his family would tell him they couldn't watch the game - Brazilian television was only interested in Real and Barcelona matches.
And that's why it's no surprise that Rivaldo was ready for anything at the moment when the Catalan giant agreed to pay four billion pesetas (about 38 million euros today) in the name of the buyout clause.
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The next chapter of this story can be said to represent modern folklore.
Between 1997 and 2002, the boy who was sacked by his first club for being malnourished dominated Europe and the world with pace, power, magnetic ball control and an endless repertoire of technical prowess.
He combined infallibility in passing the ball with frequent rabonas, precise assists that he performed with pirouettes and an unfathomable number of miraculously performed shots.
And as if he wanted to show that his goal for Moži was not accidental, he scored again from half the field, this time against Atletico Madrid.
At Camp Nou, he scored 130 times on his way to winning two league titles, one King's Cup, the Ballon d'Or and the title of FIFA Player of the Year in 1999.
He scored a hat-trick against Valencia in 2001.
It was the last game of the season and Barca needed a win to qualify for the Champions League.
His first goal was a missile from a free kick that hit the inside of the post, the second was another unstoppable shot from distance.
His third goal - in the moment when the score was tied two minutes before the end of the game - came from another planet.
At the moment when he received the ball on his chest, he was not facing the goal, but with scissors, from somewhere on the edge of the penalty area, he shot over his head and secured the victory.
His teammate from Barca, Simao Sabrosa, who was also his great friend, told BBC Sport:
"As a spectator, I watched his artistic move. It was an incredible night."
"He's done it before in training, but never so far from the goal. Since he had never done anything like that, he decided to make history in that game."
"He was a star, a role model, very calm, focused on his work, working hard to be even better."
On the field, he was very shy, but also caring and concentrated.
When he won the Ballon d'Or, he modestly thanked each of his teammates by giving them a plaque with a miniature golden ball.
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With Brazil, Rivaldo had even more success as he scored three goals on the way to the finals of the 1998 World Cup.
They lost to France in the final.
He won the Copa America in 1999, and then he was named the best player of the tournament, as he also won the title of best scorer.
At the championships in Japan and South Korea in 2002, he scored goals in the first five games of Brazil, and in the end his national team won a record fifth title.
The clearest sign of how much he has improved came from Brazil coach Luis Felipe Scolari, when he was asked who was the best player in that star-studded team.
Ronaldo? Ronaldinho? Coffee? Roberto Carlos?
"I always say how Rivaldo helped me the most in that team," Scolari said.
"People sometimes forget about tactical tasks. They only see what happens in the final, the goals... but Rivaldo was the best team player".
Luisao agrees with that.
"Everyone..." he says, before correcting himself.
"Well, most Brazilians know that Rivaldo was the best player at the 2002 World Cup."
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After a short spell at Milan, where he won the Champions League in 2003 with a penalty in the win over Juventus at Old Trafford, he spent the latter part of his career in Greece, Uzbekistan, Angola and finally back in Brazil.
He retired from football in 2015, but not before achieving another feat.
In 2008, he bought Moži Mirim - the club that traded him back in 1992.
He returned to the club as a player for the 2014/15 season.
At the age of 43, he played together with his son, 20-year-old Rivaldinho, in a match of the second Brazilian league.
Both of them enrolled in the scorers.
And yet, the overall picture was not so rosy.
Although Mozzi fans adored him, the relationship with the club began to sour when Rivaldo changed the name of the stadium in memory of his father, although Romildo had no connection with the club.
Everything got even worse when he registered the training center in his name as a return of his own investment in the club.
His wife became the vice-president, and his son became the chairman of the club's advisory body.
In December 2014, under the pressure of increasing criticism and a debt of one and a half million euros, he decided to sell the club and announced it via Instagram.
The sale was completed in July 2015.
Today, Rivaldo lives in the United States, but even though he is persona non grata in Mozi, he still regularly visits Recife, and occasionally the neighborhood in Paulista where he grew up.
He admits that misery, unemployment and violence still bring him to tears.
"As a poor kid, the idea that one day I would be considered the best player in the world, that I would be the world champion with Brazil, that I would play for Barcelona... that never crossed my mind," he said earlier this year.
"My dream was just to play professionally for Santa Cruz. That was quite enough for me".
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