Football was not Pedro Neto’s first sporting passion. In fact, he didn’t properly play it until he was eight years old. Instead, it was a stick that was thrust into his hand when he was a little boy growing up in Viana do Castelo, a small town in the far north of Portugal.

‘My father used to be a professional roller hockey player,’ Pedro tells us.

‘At three years old, I was always watching my father playing. After you start with the stick, you have to learn with the roller skates, and I started really early. It was my first passion.

‘Later I did play football at school, but I was eight years old when I first played on a team. My grandfather took me, because he loves football. I started getting my first touches. He asked me if I enjoyed it. 'Yeah, yeah, I want to come back!'

‘When I started to play football even more, I would go to my grandfather’s house, finish the food and come downstairs. My grandfather’s neighbours had a green gate, and we were not shooting against my grandfather’s gate!

‘He would say I had to try with my head, with my right foot. The way I shoot with my right foot now, it’s because my grandfather would say, 'you shoot with your left, but we have to try on the right'. So the love came from there.’

Pedro began playing organised football for his local team Vianense. It was a balancing act with roller hockey and another early love, swimming. Often, after school, he would do all three in a single evening.

The young Pedro benefited from his family’s sporting pedigree. As well as his roller hockey father, his uncle on his mum’s side, Sergio Lomba, played professional football in Portugal’s top tier. His mother was a keen volleyball player, and his two sisters competed at the national championships for trampolining.

Family outings to the beach nearby consisted of competitive footvolley and racket games, while his parents didn’t hesitate ferrying their high-achieving children around the country so they could play sport. Pedro remains eternally grateful for their commitment, for opening up possibilities, and for ‘showing me if you want to do something, you have to work hard’.

At the age of ten, Pedro joined an academy Sporting Lisbon ran in his hometown. As one of the most talented players there, he had the opportunity to move south to the club's hub in the capital. His parents decided he was too young to make such a commitment, especially as he was enjoying his football so much. In time, his performances caught the eye of Braga, much closer to home. He signed for them aged 14.

‘They spoke to my father, who asked me if I wanted to go,’ Pedro recalls.

‘I said I did. I had already been thinking about leaving roller hockey because I was really enjoying playing football. My father said to me I had to finish the hockey season first, and then I would leave it and go to Braga, when it would be impossible to do both sports at the same time.

‘When I started to play at Braga, people went to my father and said lots of my characteristics were from hockey: the way I protected the ball, the way I had low gravity, even the way I run! I put my body low; I don’t run with the chest high. I had done that since I was three or four years old.’

To get to Braga in time for school, Pedro would leave home at 7.30am. By the time training finished and he had made the hour-long journey back to Viana do Castelo, it would be around 8.30 or 9 in the evening. They were long days, but his sacrifices were worth it.

‘Everything I have today, I give big value to because I know what I suffered to arrive here,’ Pedro reflects.

‘The thing I always had from my family, from my parents and my grandparents, is to be humble. That is one thing that has always stayed with me in my head. Without being humble, you don’t go anywhere.

‘The other thing is fighting until the end,’ he adds. ‘Fighting until you reach what you want. Fighting until you achieve everything you have in your mind. Even if you pass difficult moments, you are there to fight and show how strong you are.

‘That mentality came a lot from my parents, but after it comes from my mentality as well. I took advantage of the education I had. I had teammates with really good quality, really good technique, guys who people would say, 'this guy will be this, this guy will be that'. At Braga, I was not one of these guys. Lots of people had an unbelievable education, but after lost themselves.’

Pedro’s father was fully invested in his development, watching every game he played and not hesitating to give his opinion. The promising attacker’s enthusiasm for the game, style of play, size, and inability to stay still, earned him the nickname ‘the atomic mouse’.

He needed the support of his family, because setbacks waited around the corner. He joined Lazio on loan aged just 17, accruing only 56 minutes of senior playing time during two seasons in the Italian capital. Thankfully, his parents moved too, to support him. They did likewise when he made Wolverhampton home in 2019.

Two serious injuries affected an otherwise productive time in the Black Country. First a lack of playing time, and then a prolonged spell on the sidelines: it has not been plain sailing, but through it all, Pedro’s inner desire has kept him going.

‘When I went to Italy, one thing I spoke to my agent and my parents about was having a strong mentality,’ he says.

‘We know how difficult football is when things don’t go well. Even when things go well, you can lose yourself. Sometimes I have to remember what I passed so I can enjoy it even more. It was really hard losing almost two years of football to injury.

‘On top of that, my mentality is ingrained in my head: every training I went to it was to improve, and to win. I would never change that because I have no regrets. It’s that which has made me who I am today.’