It's a long read mind!
Kenedy is in the shadow of David Luiz as they bounce into a Mayfair restaurant where fellow Brazilian Willian embraces them with a hug. For Kenedy, a boy who left his favela aged nine and grew up on the streets and beaches of Rio de Janeiro, the surrounds of London’s most gilded neighbourhood feels a long way from home.
With Luiz, though, he is comfortable. ‘I am like a big brother to him,’ says the Chelsea defender of his club-mate, who is currently lighting up the Premier League on loan at Newcastle.
Kenedy has taken the train to the capital to catch up with his friends and see this new Italian restaurant in which they are partners. Babbo (which means ‘father’ in Italian) is still under renovation and due to open next week. Kenedy, as a reward from Newcastle boss Rafa Benitez, has a two-day break from training after four straight wins. You would be wrong, however, to think he has rushed back to London.
He is settled in the North East with his young family where, as well as enjoying first-team football and the adoration of the Toon Army, he has discovered snow for the first time. More on that later.
First, though, he must help Luiz and Willian choose the design which is about to be graffitied on to the blank walls here. Luiz takes the lead — as he does on lighting, the menu and furniture — and they agree on an image of a father giving advice to his son as they sit in directors’ chairs.
Taking a back seat and observing the relationship between Luiz, 30, and Kenedy, 22, it is an appropriate choice. Luiz breaks off and, with his eyes tracking Kenedy as he tentatively mixes among staff and investors, he says: ‘I try to help him. He was always with Diego Costa but, since he left, I have taken on that role of looking out for him.
‘You see his tattoos and the ripped jeans and you think he is a crazy boy, but he is shy. His past was not easy, he is from the street. But he is a great boy with a big heart.
‘I try to watch all of Newcastle’s games and he calls me to ask about his performance.
‘But he should not worry, he has been amazing. I am cheering all the goals.’
His very first goals were scored in Santa Rita do Sapucai in southern Brazil, where Kenedy spent more time on the gravelly clearings of the favela — his own Maracana — than he did in the house he describes as ‘small and basic, but happy’.
His parents were separated and there was tension when, before his 10th birthday, he moved 225 miles east to play football in Rio. But for all of the complications, Kenedy reflects on his childhood with warmth and laughter.
He takes us back to the bedroom he shared with his father, construction worker Claudio, and his older sister, Stefany.
‘We couldn’t afford pictures so I used to make newspaper cuttings of my idols — Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Adriano — and put them all over the walls,’ he says. ‘My sister did not say too much, because my dad loved football just as much as me!’
Kenedy had periods living with both parents as well as his grandmother, who gave him the money to play organised football. Not that his mother, Elisandra, was too fond of her son’s obsession.
‘She did not want me playing all day,’ he says. ‘I once escaped the house and she locked the door to leave me outside. When I was finally allowed back in, she screamed all night!’
Kenedy, though, was not about to hang up his boots because of his mother’s concerns. He did not have any to hang up, for starters.
‘I did not have shoes or football boots,’ he explains.
‘We played in bare feet. We didn’t have a doctor, so if you broke a toe or cut your foot, you just carried on until the game finished. Then you went home and put it in ice!
‘Whoever won the game got a bottle of Coca-Cola from the losers...and I always won. We used two big stones as goalposts and played all day and night, or at least until the owner of the ball wanted to go home, and that was that.’
Did he ever own the ball? ‘Never,’ he replies. ‘We didn’t have the money.’
Kenedy’s move to the academy of Friburguense in Rio state — his dad was for it, his mother against — was the first step to easing the family’s hardship, even if it did take another eight years for his first real pay packet after making his debut for Fluminense aged 17.
‘I sent that straight to my dad,’ he reveals. ‘The house was collapsing and he did not want to move, it was owned by his father before him. So I paid to have the house repaired and I have also been able to pay for a house for my mother.’
Having spent his early years inland in Santa Rita and then an hour from the coast at Friburguense, a move to Vasco da Gama in Rio gave the young Brazilian a belated introduction to sand. ‘Wow,’ he says. ‘I was 10 years old when I first saw a beach and that was it — head tennis and foot volley on the Copacabana, we just started playing and didn’t stop.’
In the famous colours of Fluminense and playing at the Maracana — on grass, not gravel — word soon spread of this talented teenage winger. Nowhere was the talk more intense than in west London.
And so, in 2015, Chelsea signed Kenedy for £6.3m and he immediately joined their pre-season tour of North America. Mention of Jose Mourinho, then manager of the Blues, draws a smile. He recalls: ‘I arrived and he said to me, “Are you Kenedy?” I said, “Yes, I am”. Jose said, “OK, let’s see if you can play the way they talk about you”.’
And did he? ‘He never told me!’ says Kenedy. ‘But I like Jose a lot. I have a lot of respect for him. His nickname for me is “Favela”, in a kind way.’ Mourinho, we are told, calls him that in recognition of Kenedy’s energy, enthusiasm and carefree perspective.
But what of his real name, Robert Kenedy Nunes Nascimento? The family title — Nascimento — they share with Brazil legend Pele. ‘When I was younger I did not know Pele’s full name because we did not have a TV or computer,’ he explains.
‘But when I was older my dad told me, so after that I said to my friends that Pele was my uncle! As for Robert, that is after another footballer, and Kenedy after the American president.’
There is, though, no tattoo of JFK or even his country’s greatest player. Curiously, there is Marilyn Monroe. And Muhammad Ali. And rapper Tupac Shakur. And Bob Marley. And the inscription on his neck, ‘Sorry mother for my crazy life’, just beneath some lipstick-red lips.
There is also, on his ribcage, his wife Lohaine, with whom he has a nine-month-old daughter, Lorena. They are expecting another child later this year. It is a surprise to learn that Kenedy has a young family. But then, listening to him talk of his daughter and his wish for a son, it suddenly seems very natural. It suits him. Perhaps Luiz was right — he isn’t crazy after all.
‘It was the best thing that happened to me in my life, the arrival of my daughter,’ he says. ‘It has changed the way I am, the way I think. And I do it all — change the nappies, get her to sleep, wake up in the middle of the night. I can’t wait for the new baby, a little boy I hope, a little footballer.’
A friend cuts in, ‘No, no, not two Kenedys, one is enough!’
His next tattoos, he says, will be of his children, although it takes us a few seconds to find a patch of free skin — his uninked knees poking through the holes in his jeans.
Willian wants his say on his compatriot’s body artwork. ‘I don’t like any of them,’ announces the 29-year-old. ‘I don’t like tattoos. I will never have any, they are too painful.’
Seconds earlier, Willian had listed Kenedy’s qualities — skill, pace, a big heart and being a cool guy. ‘The amount of tattoos he has, you can add bravery to that,’ laughs the Brazil midfielder, who believes Kenedy will soon join him in the national squad.
Both Luiz and Willian seem genuinely thrilled at Kenedy’s impact at St James’ Park, where he has scored two and created two and sparked the revival which sees the team safely in the top half of the table.
‘I spoke with him before he left in January and told him he would love Newcastle,’ says Luiz. ‘I told him about the great support and atmosphere. Now he is in love. I am not surprised.
‘Rafa Benitez is also a great friend of mine. I told Kenedy that he would find a special coach, a special person who would improve him as a player and also as a man. I told him he is in good hands.’
Kenedy adds: ‘Rafa helps me a lot, every day. But the thing I am most thankful for is that he had belief in me and gave me this chance.
‘I never imagined it would have gone so well. They have amazing fans, they are crazy for the team — fanatical, beautiful, I feel privileged to be around them. My first goal was an amazing sensation. When I saw the celebration in the stand, that gives you the energy to do whatever it takes.’
Benitez joked last week that Kenedy has been so good he may well prove too expensive to make permanent his stay beyond the summer, as is the manager’s wish.
Kenedy refuses to put a price on himself, that is until one is suggested for him. ‘How about £25million?’ we venture.
‘Higher,’ he says with a mischievous smile, exposing the braces which remind you of his tender years.
‘I am enjoying my time at Newcastle, but obviously I have a contract at Chelsea. If something occurs then I will be more than happy, it is a good place for me. I like it.’
What he has enjoyed more than anything on Tyneside is the snow, even if the rest of the North East had grown sick of it after five days of disruption. ‘It was the first time I’d ever seen snow!’ beams Kenedy, who lives in the same Northumberland village as Alan Shearer. ‘I was very, very excited. I spent two hours playing in the garden. My French Bulldog, Hercules, he loved it too.
‘I was doing everything — throwing snowballs, I built a snowman, I kicked the snow, I lay down in the snow, I wanted to sleep in the snow! It was a beautiful week, it was so nice to see that for the first time. I want more snow!’
Another first, at Christmas, was the arrival of his parents for a holiday in London.
‘It was their first time out of Brazil and first time on an aeroplane,’ he says. ‘It was so nice to have them here, to show them my life. They are so proud.’
So, too, are Luiz and Willian. But for Kenedy, much like his friends’ restaurant, this is just the beginning
