A broken promise left twins in a foreign country broke and starving. Be and Leo Martins, born two minutes apart in Rio de Janeiro, had been seduced to Madrid on the pledge of a contract with an 11-a-side football club.

Their struggling parents had somehow scraped the money together to get them across the Atlantic. When they got there, there was no paper to sign. No club had even heard their names. Their agent had vanished.

The brothers were devastated. Heartbreak was rapidly superseded by hunger. Be and Leo therefore began handing out pamphlets across Gran Via. It paid a pittance, but it at least enabled them to buy pasta and rice.

The brothers went from having four meals a day to skipping breakfast, dinner and supper and having one – a lunch that would sometimes consist of sauceless spaghetti. “We were starving,” recalled Be. “We went to bed starving every night.”

Be Martins ended 2022 by eating the Almas caviar of his sport – and it’s not football. The mercurial wing was crowned the Best Player in the World award at the Beach Soccer Stars ceremony in Dubai.Be’s eyes are now fixated on lifting another trophy in ‘The City of Gold’ – the deluxe silver-and-gold one that awaits the winners of February’s FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup™.

FIFA caught up with Be to discuss deciding to represent Portugal over Brazil, becoming a world champion, playing alongside the legendary Madjer, being named the best player on the planet, competing with his twin for individual awards and UAE 2024.

FIFA: You and Leo went hungry during your attempt to make it as 11-a-side footballers, right?
Be Martins: We got an opportunity at 11-a-side. Or we thought we did. We went to Spain and thought it was our gateway to a professional career. Our dad paid for it all. As soon as we got there it went wrong. We had a problem with the agent. Ultimately our money ran out. Me and my brother said to our dad, ‘Look, dad, we know the sacrifice you and our mother made for us to come here. We won’t go back home until we get your money back.’ My dad said he had to go back home because he was already of a certain age and he couldn’t stay. We said, ‘Dad, you go but we’ll stay and find a way to survive’. We were trying to get trials at clubs. We were passing out pamphlets on the streets to support ourselves, but it paid very little. It was tough. We were starving. Then we found a club whose coach had a butcher’s. For every victory he promised us some meat as a form of payment. Can you imagine how much two brothers, hungry, wanted to win!? (laughs) It was like that for around three months until we got a chance in the Spanish second division B. That’s when we got things going financially and were able to bring our parents over.