SO, WHAT DID YOU DO IN THE FIRST WEEK OF YOUR JOB, GUYS?

Few people have ever started a new role quite as well as Joao Pedro. Within days, he'd scored three crucial goals to help Chelsea win the Club World Cup – he tells FFT how it felt, and why his three-year ban on soft drinks paid off...

- Caio Carrieri

You don’t usually join Chelsea halfway through a Club World Cup. And you definitely don’t normally land at the tournament, lace up your boots, then immediately win the thing.

Joao Pedro, apparently, didn’t get the memo. One moment he was enjoying a bit of downtime in Brazil, the next he'd completed a £60 million deal and was on a flight to the United States to join his new teammates, knee-deep in the quarterfinals of the revamped tournament, chasing glory on the global stage to follow up their triumph in the Conference League.

A week after linking up with Chelsea, though, Pedro had bagged a dazzling brace on his first start for his new team, against his boyhood club Fluminense in the semifinals, before finishing things off with the cheekiest of chips in a 3-0 dismantling of European champions Paris Saint-Germain. A goal in the final, a medal round his neck and a handshake from Donald Trump, as the US president took centre stage during the trophy presentation - the forward could have been forgiven for wondering if every new job should begin like this.

Yet when you speak to him now that he’s had time to process it all, there’s no longer a hint of disbelief heard in his voice. Pedro sees the whirlwind as years in the making - the grind of building a Premier League body, the hard lessons learned playing at Watford and Brighton, and the quiet confidence that football's biggest stages demand.

This has also been the year in which he’s made his first start for Brazil and seriously strengthened his claim to play at next summer’s World Cup, aiming to follow in the footsteps of Romario and Bebeto- the Selecao’s famous strike force at their last World Cup in North America, back in 1994. If all that hasn't been enough, he’s had a side quest too, as the manager of trap artist Trak.