The next few months are crucial in Alexandre Pato's career

Pato has never become the reliable protagonist his talent suggests he should. A potential January move could make or break his career.

One of the saddest aspects of sports is unfulfilled potential, the lingering nostalgia of an unrealized future. 

Were this sadness a liquid, Freddy Adu would bathe in it. Nery Castillo would use it to wax his unibrow. And Ricardo Quaresma would hoard it in water towers across Turkey and Portugal. 

Should things go poorly in the next few months, Alexandre Pato could end up at Unfulfilled Potential Anonymous meetings, sitting across from Alvaro Recoba, with Sebastian Deisler mixing too much creamer into a Styrofoam cup of coffee in the corner. 

He's not there yet, not by a long shot. 

But – like Yoann Gourcuff or Theo Walcott, players with cavernous depths of ability – he has quivered on the precipice of truly elite play for enough years that fans can justifiably worry if he'll ever quite develop fully. 

Clearly, at 22, Pato is among the most gifted players on the planet. Last season he averaged a goal every 86 minutes. 

The problem is not the goals, but the minutes. 

Aside from 2008-09 when he made 27 league starts, Pato has never had more than 20 in a season. He's suffered eight muscular injuries in the last two years, 11 injuries in total during that span. According to La Gazzetta dello Sport, he missed 152 days to injury in 2010. 

The lack of playing time has limited the Brazilian striker to only 15 goals in any given season. 

"We looked at all the possible problems with our doctors and they said it was unusual for a boy of his age to suffer from so many injuries," Milan coach Massimiliano Allegri said earlier in the year. "It is not normal." 
With only four starts this season, Milan may prefer to cash in on its most precocious asset. In 2007, Milan paid upwards of 22 million euros to Brazilian team International for the 17-year-old upon the advice of then-scout Leonardo. Now Leonardo has reportedly convinced Paris Saint-Germain to part with 50 million euros for his countryman. 

If that number is accurate, Milan can't really justify rejecting it. 

The situation has also shifted slightly since mid-December when Milan vice president Adriano Galliani told La Gazzetta there was "not a chance in hell" the "untouchable" Pato would be sold. Since then, Pato responded poorly to public criticism from Allegri and has struggled to crack the starting XI even when fit. 

"I would like to have a more direct relationship with Allegri. I won't say much more,'' Pato told Corriere dello Sport. "But the fact remains that if he has seen something wrong with my game then he should come to me directly so we can discuss it."

Then, damningly, he invoked former coach Carlo Ancelotti, set to be unveiled as PSG's new coach on Friday. 

"Carlo always spoke to me, told me what to do on the field," Pato said.

Milan issued a denial of the Pato-to-Paris rumors as recently as Wednesday. 

Additionally, club president Silvio Berlusconi indicated in a recent interview that he would prefer to see Pato start more and closer to goal, next to Zlatan Ibrahimovic. 

Berlusconi may have extra motivation for those comments, of course. His daughter, Barbara, is dating Pato. With Barbara serving on the Milan board, she attempted to allay fears of nepotism this summer by telling Vanity Fair, "All the players can be sold and Pato is no different."

It's easy to see how Barbara could fall for Pato, with his angelic, boyish face and endearing heart-shaped hand gestures to celebrate goals. Pato comes across as too much of a sweetheart for the dirt to stick on his public image. 



His relationship with Barbara, five years his senior, has helped erase the memory of his 10-month marriage at age 20. And instead of a raunchy webcam video that leaked early in his Milan career, fans tend to remember the infectiously joyous clips of him singing and dancing with Thiago Silva, Kevin-Prince Boateng and Robinho. 

"Pato is a terrible dancer," Boateng joked recently. "He's the only Brazilian who hasn't got any rhythm."

Synching on the pitch has also proved elusive. 

Toward the end of last season, when the Italian press latched firmly onto the notion that Pato and Ibrahimovic couldn't gel, Pato submitted arguably his best performance in a Milan shirt in a 3-0 demolition of Napoli. 

Pato won the penalty for the first, assisted the second and scored the last himself with a dazzling long-distance curler. Almost single-handedly, he sliced up one of the best sides in Europe. 

But even during that sparkling, singular performance, he didn't necessarily slake criticism. When he assisted Boateng, Ibrahimovic was arguably in a better position to score. And Ibra was available and screaming for the ball when Pato scored the third, the Swede's yelling only silenced by the swish of the ball in the net. 

"We don't really see a lot of each other off the pitch," Pato admitted to Corriere dello Sport. 

A move to Paris would solve the immediate problem of escaping Ibra's ponytailed shadow, but it won't cure the larger dilemma. Eventually Pato's unquestionable talent demands he mature into a true protagonist for one of the world's elite clubs. 

That's what makes his decision this January all the more crucial. If he picks wrong, if that next level of development never comes, he may find himself sunning on the same beach as Denilson back in Brazil.