DOUGLAS LUIZ shops in Tesco with his superstar girlfriend Alisha Lehmann

Douglas Luiz still remembers the day he didn’t get to training on time, the day when his father’s car was needed for something more urgent.

‘I was about to go training with my Brazilian club Vasco de Gama but someone in the favela had been shot in the head,’ Luiz tells Mail Sport in a very matter of fact way.

‘They brought him to my father’s car. It was 8am. I had to get out of the car as my dad had to take him to the hospital. At least he survived. Some things are more important than football eh?’

Luiz, the Aston Villa midfielder, knows the meaning of that last statement well. The 25-year-old was born and raised in a two-room house in Rio de Janeiro’s Nova Holanda favela in the north of the city.

It is part of a favela complex that is home to 130,000 people. The life he lives now, a life of comfort and security in the Premier League, is very different but that does not mean he has forgotten.

‘I have many friends from the favela and many of them are going the bad way,’ Luiz explains. ‘I am not happy about that but it’s so difficult. People just don’t have opportunities. You need to eat. Feed your family. You may have a baby. You have to do something.

‘But everything is harder for us. If we go for a job in, say, a supermarket but we come from a favela, we don’t get the job. It’s so wrong but it’s true.

‘I have seen everything in my life. I have seen people stabbed in front of me. I have seen people shot. Many bad things. But the good thing is that those communities are strong. If you don’t have food, the community will help. That’s a good part of it.’

Luiz is one of many Brazilian footballers supporting the work of Sao Paulo entrepreneur Edu Lyra as he looks to improve the conditions of the millions of Brazilian still living in