A fashionable short haircut is always timeless, for that reason alone the bald head goes well with Pepe.

The defender of the Portuguese used to wear curly black hair, but now he swears by a bald head.

As a football player, Pepe himself is like his hairstyle, he outlasts all times and trends.

At the age of 38, which is no longer quite young, he soars to new sporting heights.

Against Germany this Saturday (6 p.m. in the FAZ live ticker for the European Football Championship, on ARD and MagentaTV), Pepe will again be part of the Portuguese two-generation defense. Next man in central defense is Ruben Dias, 24 years old from Manchester City. Dias was voted Player of the Season in the English Premier League, and experts consider him the main reason that his club won the English championship with ease and made it to the final of the Champions League.

In the first European Championship game against Hungary (3: 0), however, the gifted seemed a bit nervous and revealed some lack of concentration.

It's good that he has an experienced man like Pepe next to him.

In his twenty years as a professional, he has played around 750 competitive games and was active 116 times for Portugal.

A considerable number that Pepe grappled and fought for with all the fibers of his still wiry and perfectly trained body.

"I was very spoiled"

At an early age, when he was not quite an adult, he left his native Brazil to make it as a professional in Europe.

The first few years were hard, homesickness.

He stayed with Maritimo Funchal for some time before FC Porto noticed him.

Then everything happened very quickly.

Champions League winner under José Mourinho, World Cup winner, move to Real Madrid.

In 2007 he became a Portuguese citizen, from that moment it was an integral part of the selection of Portugal.

He has taken part in all major tournaments since then, there are seven of them.

At least as astonishing as his eternal youth is his change in the late stages of his career.

Last season he got by without a single expulsion.

But does that help to blur his reputation as the eternal villain?

Like a seething volcano, it often appeared in earlier years, always on the verge of an eruption. In Spain he was suspended for ten games once for hitting and kicking an opponent who was lying on the ground. Later he once said that he was shocked when he saw the pictures. Its reputation in general. In an interview with “Tribuna Expresso”, he revealed astonishing that he was completely past his private person. “I slept with my mother until I was 18. I was very spoiled. Although I have a reputation for being the bad guy, I am kind. "

Despite his kindness, his fuse was one of the shortest in top international football and opposing strikers tried to use it regularly in their favor. If he then grimaced in the exuberance of emotions and the anger threatened to break out of his prominent forehead, he was primarily seen by opposing fans as the personified evil in defender form.

All of that is now far away, Pepe seems more calm and tidy than perhaps never before. The success proves him right. To consider the past season as his masterful late work is not presumptuous. With Porto he reached the quarter-finals and on the way there he knocked out Juventus Turin on his own. That happened on a cool spring evening in Turin, Juve and Porto had dueled in extra time and in Pepe the volcano woke up again.

Only this time he didn't break out uncontrollably, but channeled his strength into a torrent of thirst for action. He seemed to be all over the field, throwing himself in shots, standing in passes and rescuing, if necessary, at the very last moment for his defeated goalkeeper. For this he was courted with eulogies from all over Europe. Some even speculated that there had not been such an outstanding individual performance since Diego Maradona in 1986. One of the defeated on the Juventus side was Cristiano Ronaldo. He is now all the more pleased to have Pepe in his own team.