Brazilian star was valued at $17 million on the transfer market. Then he got COVID

Something usually has to go wrong for a player of Leo Sena’s calibre to land at an A-League club. In the case of the Brazilian midfielder, who has signed a two-year deal with Sydney FC, it all started with COVID.

Three years ago, Sena was sent on loan to Italian side Spezia from Atlético Mineiro in Brazil. Spezia had gained promotion to Serie A for 2020-21, but were tipped to go straight back down. They were coached that season by Thiago Motta, the former Brazilian international who is now in charge of Juventus, and whose managerial reputation was partly built on the back of what Italian media described as a “miracle” campaign as he steered Spezia clear of relegation.

Leo Sena, on duty for Spezia in 2021, gets his studs in on Cristiano Ronaldo.Credit: Getty

A deep-lying creative midfielder, Sena made 16 appearances in Italy’s top flight, mostly across the back end of that season, and was the second-most fouled player in Europe’s top-five leagues (behind only Jack Grealish), which suggests that other teams saw him as a danger. Motta also liked what he saw, so much so that Spezia exercised their option to buy him on a permanent basis for $2 million.

But they weren’t the only ones impressed. Fiorentina, one of Italy’s biggest clubs, were taken by him, too, and had agreed terms to buy him from Spezia for $17 million for the following season.

Then Sena got COVID. And when he reported for routine medical testing before his proposed transfer, scans revealed he had myocarditis, or an inflammation of the heart muscle, as a result of his battle with the illness.

Italy has famously strict legislation which blocks anyone with heart-based irregularities from playing professional sport; those laws forced Christian Eriksen, after his heart attack at Euro 2020, to leave Inter Milan and continue his club career in England, albeit for different medical reasons to Sena.

As such, the transfer to Fiorentina fell through, and Spezia sidelined him from training for a month as a precaution. While he made a full recovery – he wasn’t struggling with long COVID for months on end, despite some reports – the problem didn’t go away and he couldn’t be registered in their squad. So he spent an entire year on the sidelines, a victim of Italian regulations, and was released from his contract at the end of the 2021-22 season to return to Brazil.

More than two years after his last appearance for Spezia, and after wrestling with his lost confidence in his body and even contemplating an early retirement, Sena finally returned to professional football with Bulgarian club Lokomotiv Plovdiv last season, and at the start of this year, signed with Brazilian club Água Santa on a short-term deal to give him flexibility for a move this season.

And that’s where Sydney FC come in, having tracked him for some time. Sena has passed all relevant medical tests in Australia and has already played in his first competitive match, a friendly against Macarthur FC which was held before his signing was announced.

A direct replacement for departed captain Luke Brattan, if Sena, now 28, can get back to his best, he could be one of the premier players in the competition.

“It’s a great opportunity for me to play for a great club in a highly competitive league,” he said in a statement. “I’ve had an excellent few days since my arrival here and I have a very good feeling about this season. We have some exciting young stars as well as some smart, more experienced players, and I think it’s a great mix to challenge for silverware.”