30/07/2023
🗣️ ANGEL DI MARIA: "When I was 15 years old and with a weak physique, a coach denigrated me in front of everyone: 'You're a disaster. You're never going to achieve anything. You're going to be a failure,' he told me for not jumping in a corner. I never wanted to play again, but I pulled myself together and kept going until I proved that man wrong.
I was very small and skinny. At 16, I still hadn't been promoted, and my dad started to worry. One night we were sitting in the kitchen and he said to me: 'You have three options: you can work with me, finish school or try another year with football. But if it doesn't work out, you're going to have to come work with me'. I didn't say anything. It was a complicated situation, we needed the money. But that's when my mom jumped in and said, 'One more year in football.' That was in January. In December of that year, in the last month of the deadline I made my debut in the First Division with Rosario Central.
I owe everything to my mom and to football. Imagine this: a woman riding a bicycle all over Rosario, with a boy in the back and a little girl in the front, plus a sports bag with my shoes and something to eat in the basket in front of me. Going uphill. Downhill. Passing through the most difficult neighborhoods. In the rain. In the cold. At night. It didn't matter. My mom just kept riding." ❤️⚽
12/11/2022
26/10/2022