Slaven Bilic will never forget one conversation he had with a young Joao Pedro as he was starting to make an impact in English football.
Bilic had been in charge of Watford for a short time after being given the job in September 2022 but had already seen enough to know the then-21-year-old had huge potential.
“I remember telling him once that he could be the Michael Jordan of the team,” Bilic tells The Athletic. “‘Like Jordan with the Chicago Bulls, this is your team, you have to take more responsibility. It is not enough that you are playing well, you have to make the others play well too’. He embraced that.
“I told him, ‘You have to think big, it will be a waste otherwise’. I remember we were in Spain during the 2022 World Cup, preparing for the season to restart. We went out for a meal, the whole team. Brazil were playing against Serbia when Richarlison scored a great bicycle kick. I turned to Joao and told him, ‘You have a quality to play for Brazil very soon’. He didn’t say, ‘Oh no, no no’. He was like, ‘Yes, yes, yes, that’s my ambition’. I was surprised in a positive way how assured, how focused he was.”
This is why Joao Pedro leading from the front at Chelsea has not taken Bilic, nor other personnel from his time at his first English club Watford, by surprise.
As the Brazilian prepares for his first FA Cup final at Wembley against Manchester City and attempts to help Chelsea win the trophy for the first time since 2018, it is clear from those who knew him back then that he was always destined to play on the biggest stage.
No one will dispute Joao Pedro looks the finished article.
His form has been one of the few positives for Chelsea in a difficult campaign. With 15 goals, he is the fourth-highest scorer in the Premier League behind Erling Haaland, Igor Thiago and Antoine Semenyo. Unlike those three, none of his strikes have come from the penalty spot.
He has broken the 20-goal barrier for all competitions and did so with one of the best goals of 2025-26, a spectacular overhead kick in a 3-1 defeat to Nottingham Forest this month. If Chelsea are to beat City on Saturday, you suspect he will be one of the key men.
He was named in Brazil’s provisional 55-man World Cup squad this week and, having won eight caps, he is expected to make the final cut.
It has been some rise since he first arrived as a raw teenager in England in January 2020, having agreed to join Watford, who were in the Premier League then, from Brazilian side Fluminense. The deal was put in place when he was still just 16 but, due to transfer regulations, he had to wait until he turned 18 to complete it.
Former Tottenham and Brazil goalkeeper Heurelho Gomes, who was part of a Watford side struggling to stay in the top flight when Joao Pedro joined, played an important role in him adapting to England.
Joao Pedro at Watford in 2022 (Athena Pictures/Getty Images)
“He could not speak any English,” Gomes tells The Athletic. “I found a place for him to live and I used to pick him up at his house to take him to training. I would talk to him on our journeys about football, but also where to buy Brazilian foods and the best Brazilian restaurants. I also helped translate for the coach (Nigel Pearson). I was very close to him, I saw him as a son.
“The only issue he had was he wanted to play from the first day. Sometimes the manager would leave him out of the squad (Pearson played him just four times before the end of the 2019-20 season). That was very hard for him. The club’s idea was to prepare him. He was well-liked, but physically he was light. The club wanted him to build more muscles. English football is very tough physically. But he felt he was ready to play from the first minute.
“I needed to calm him down sometimes. I had to tell him this was different football and the club had to see he was ready.
“The thing about Joao is, he is one of the few players I saw with a winning mentality from the start. Brazilians love to play football but sometimes we struggle with that part. But he was different. Not only did he have the quality — it was different class — but mentality-wise, he was prepared for the new challenge.”
A measure of how much Joao Pedro was already thinking ahead was how he grilled Gomes, who was part of Brazil’s 2010 World Cup squad, on what it was like to represent the national team. This was two years before Bilic spoke to him about it.
Dan Gosling, who is now part of Watford’s first-team coaching staff, joined the club from Bournemouth 12 months after Joao Pedro. He had already seen examples of what the youngster could do.
“When I started training, that is when I saw the best of him,” Gosling says. “Some of the stuff he would do, he was just on a different level to everyone, even at such a young age.
“He has this ability to get away from people and it is not because he is blisteringly quick. It is his game intelligence which sets him apart. He can find space, he knows when to take one touch and move the defender behind him or in front. He will sometimes just stop the ball and a defender will move and he goes the opposite way. That is what you see at Chelsea now, being the No 9 linking play. He is getting in the box, but also the way he drops deep is beautiful.
“He is not fazed. Playing in big games for Chelsea or leading the line for Brazil… it’s his natural habitat. He is a world-class player and he has proved it. He is only getting better and has another level to go. Some of the goals he has scored this season remind me of things he did in training at Watford. I think of the one at Newcastle, where he headed the ball to himself to run on to. Very few players have that intelligence or technical ability.”
Joao Pedro is in Brazil’s provisional World Cup squad (Rich Storry/Getty Images)
Not everything went smoothly at Watford. He played under 10 head coaches in three and a half years and suffered two relegations from the Premier League.
One of those was under former England head coach Roy Hodgson in 2022 (the first being under Pearson). He scored just one Premier League goal in 13 appearances under Hodgson. But despite his struggles, Hodgson never had any doubts over him.
“You could see the qualities which made him a star,” Hodgson says. “His awareness was very good, finding time and space. Technically, he showed his skills. It was obvious, if he continued to improve at the rate he was, it would not take him long for it to pay off and lift him to the level where he is today.
“He had not been in the country that long and was not as strong as he is now. He has had four more years of professional training and fitness work. At the time, he was probably more of a No 10. I didn’t really see him as an out-and-out No 9. But it’s a position that requires the talents he’s got.
“It was not easy for him to make his mark. Unfortunately, it did not give him the platform he needed. All the qualities he is showing today, he was showing then. To improve at the rate he has, he has needed to play with good players around him and a good environment.”
Watford’s struggles meant Joao Pedro spent two of his seasons with them in the Championship before Brighton and Hove Albion bought him for just under £30million in 2023. There was a stage under Bilic where it looked like he would end his period at Vicarage Road with a second promotion to England’s top division.
Joao Pedro joined Brighton in 2023 (Bryn Lennon/Getty Images)
He scored seven goals in 17 appearances for Bilic, but two injuries restricted his availability. It speaks volumes that Bilic made him captain when he was available.
“He has leadership quality,” Bilic says. “You might think he would leave after Watford got relegated a second time, but he stayed. You can see at Chelsea, he never moans. I think the Championship helped him with that. There are so many tough games. It is not spectacular. He was never complaining, ‘We have to go to Preston’. He never looked for excuses.
“He did not talk a lot, but he has that attitude that, if you don’t know him well, you might think he is a bit arrogant. He comes across a bit like Zlatan Ibrahimovic… not saying he is the same player. In terms of his head being held high, chest out.
“Ibra told me he was more pleased with making assists than scoring goals. Joao, in the beginning, looked like that. But at Brighton (30 goals, 10 assists) and Chelsea (23 goals, nine assists) he is becoming a ruthless forward while not losing the other side of his game.
“Sometimes you can see when the ball is wide, you can see him jogging, he is not sprinting into the box. He is screening and reading the situation. But then he arrives at the right time and scores.
“He is not a striker like a Haaland, who can have three to four touches in a game. Joao loves the ball, he can keep the ball, beat a man one-v-one, he can hold it up. He is more than just a striker. He is a footballer.”
Joao Pedro has been a rare bright spark for Chelsea this season (Visionhaus/Getty Images)
Bilic took satisfaction from watching the way he played up against Arsenal’s centre-back pairing of Gabriel and William Saliba during Chelsea’s narrow 2-1 league defeat in March.
“There are a lot of skilful players who are not great in tackles, but he is,” Bilic says. “He is not running away, he loves them, he is asking for them. He can be nasty in a positive way, a little bit like Ibra, character and attitude-wise. And I love it. That can kill the opposition, mentally. They realise they can’t rattle him.
“I managed some great players in the Croatia national team and various football clubs. Joao is up there with them.”
That is some accolade, given Bilic has also coached players such as Luka Modric, Ivan Perisic, Mario Mandzukic, Dario Srna and Dmitri Payet.
Gomes, who now works as an agent and as an ambassador for Watford, has stayed in contact with Joao Pedro and messaged after Chelsea’s Club World Cup win.
So how will he be feeling ahead of the FA Cup final? “I can see him telling the others this is a chance to change the end of Chelsea’s season,” Gomes says. “I hope this is an opportunity to send him another message.”
Whatever happens, Joao Pedro has already sent a strong signal he belongs at the top.
