From Poverty to the Top or The Toughest Beginnings of Famous Footballers

Cristiano Ronaldo, Raheem Sterling, Sadio Mané… Names we are all familiar with. Of course, these are the famous footballers that the whole football world knows today. But their road to success has often been very thorny and full of obstacles. Many of them came from very poor backgrounds indeed and had to face hardships in their childhood that most people today have no idea about.

Lionel Messi

The Argentine football magician was born in Rosario, a city in the east of Argentina, about 350 km from the capital Buenos Aires. He came from a poorer family. His father worked in an iron factory, his mother was a cleaner.

Little Lionel was involved in football from a young age, but being an introvert, he often kicked himself against the wall or trained his feet instead of with other boys.

At the age of 11, he was diagnosed with a growth hormone deficiency. His local club, River Plate, didn’t want to pay for his treatment. Fortunately, his parents were approached by Barcelona soon after and offered Messi a trial with the team.

The coach, Carles Rexach, was impressed and offered Messi a contract (he wrote it on a paper napkin in a restaurant at the time) that included payment for the entire costly treatment. Messi came through the La Masia academy, got a chance in the A-team in the 2004/05 season and so the Messi era at Barcelona began.

Cristiano Ronaldo

Ronaldo didn’t have an easy start in life either. The Portuguese, full name Cristiano Ronaldo dos Santos Aveiro, was born on the island of Madeira in the city of Funchal. He grew up in a purely working-class neighbourhood in a small house with a tin roof and a view of the ocean.

He was introduced to football by his father, who worked as an equipment manager at a youth club. His childhood was very difficult for him because his father had a drinking problem and often came home drunk.

His mother, a trained cook, confided to the press that she wanted to have an abortion before Ronaldo was born because she already had three children at the time and because of his father’s alcohol problem.

As a child, Ronaldo was expelled from school for assaulting his teacher (he threw a chair at him).

Ronaldo was exceptionally talented with the ball from a young age, which was noticed in Lisbon. After a short stint at Nacional Football Club in Madeira, Cristiano went to Sporting CP, from where he moved to Manchester United in 2003 to become one of the best strikers in football history.

Sadio Mané

For a change, a player originally from Africa, specifically Senegal. Mané was born in the city of Sedhiou, which today has a population of about 25,000. He grew up in the small village of Bambali located in the south of the country. He was brought up by his uncle because his parents already had many children and had no way to provide for Mané financially.

“My parents simply didn’t have the money to send me to school. Every day from morning until evening, I went to play football with my friends,” Mané let slip.

“When I was little, all I could think about was the Premier League, which I watched on TV. It became my big dream,” he confided.

Sadio and his friends took football very seriously. The other villagers soon began to notice that Mané was an exceptional talent and his skills stood out among the other boys.

Thanks to help from kind-hearted residents, many of whom he did not even know personally, he managed to raise enough money to go to play in Dakar, the Senegalese capital.

Mané quickly acclimatised and began to show his full potential. In his first two seasons alone, he scored 131 goals in 90 games for the team.

The turning point came when French scouts arrived in Dakar and offered him to join the Senegalese football academy. After he proved himself, the scouts arranged a contract for him with Metz. So the 15-year-old Senegalese moved to France.

After just one season, he was bought out by Austrian side RB Salzburg and in return, Mané helped them win the double two seasons later. From there, the story is familiar. Prior to his actual involvement with Liverpool, he spent a year at Southampton, from where he transferred for £34m in 2016.

Edinson Cavani

Let’s move back to South America. Edinson Cavani, known among football enthusiasts as “El Matador”, like previous stars, came from a poor family. His birthplace is the city of Salto, located in the west of Uruguay.

Cavani was the third child in order and grew up alongside two older brothers. A little interesting fact is that his national teammate Luis Suárez was born in the same city just a month earlier.

Although his family didn’t have much money, his parents always made sure he had enough food and clothes. As a kid, Cavani roamed the streets of Salta and played football in the narrow alleys of the city, which helped him develop a brilliant technique.

He often played against older boys who teased him, and it was not infrequent for the young Cavani to get into fights with them. Because of his desire and determination to become a footballer, he moved to Danubia as a nine-year-old, where he signed his first professional contract.

Since his father and one of his older brothers played football, they began coaching him and helping him improve. Cavani gradually developed into the leader of the entire offensive line and in 2006 he achieved his first success with the team, managing to win the Uruguayan National League.

In 2007, he changed jobs and went to Palermo, where he managed to break through in European football. Three years later, he signed a five-year contract with Napoli. The rest is history.

Raheem Sterling

Raheem Shaquille Sterling came into the world in December 1994. He spent his childhood in Kingston, Jamaica. Sterling’s father is not officially known, but is likely to be Errol Sterling, his mother’s previous partner.

As a child, he grew up in a notoriously dangerous and gang-controlled neighborhood. The town’s residents were ordered by the gangs where they could and could not move, where they could and could not go.

“It’s one of the worst areas on the whole island. It lacks basic health and education facilities. There’s a big problem with guns and crime,” the Jamaican journalist said of the area where Sterling grew up.

At the age of six, he and his family moved to London, the capital of England. Sterling is a perfect example of how school, parents and a football club combined to make a talented young man into a football star, under very difficult circumstances.

Raheem soon showed the world his talent at Alpha and Omega Football Club. It wasn’t long before the young winger was recruited by Queens Park Rangers FC. At the age of 15, he had offers on the table from Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool and Manchester City. Through Liverpool he came to the Citizens, where he still plays today.

Bonus:

Zinedine Zidane

The last of the representatives has now retired from his playing career and has followed it up with success as coach of Real Madrid, where he once played. But not many people know that this football superstar also grew up in great poverty.

Zinedine’s life story begins in 1972 in Marseille, the port on the south coast of France where he was born. His mother was originally from Algeria. Zidane grew up in La Castellane, an urban development notorious for high crime rates.

There was high unemployment and a high suicide rate in this part of the city. His father worked as a night watchman in a department store. His entire family of seven had to fit into a small apartment and Zidane spent his entire childhood in poverty.

From the age of five, he started playing football with the neighbourhood kids. For others, it was a leisure activity. Zidane saw football as a way to end the suffering of his loved ones and help them out of their need.

In 1981, he was noticed by a local club, from where Zidane gradually worked his way up to Cannes, where he made his first appearance for the A-team. He followed up his excellent performances a few years later in a Bordeaux jersey and his career took off in full swing.

I’d like to end the story with his most famous quote:

“I once cried because I didn’t have shoes to play football with my friends. One day I saw a man who had no feet and realized how rich I was.”

All of these players are famous today, the whole world knows them, and they have no shortage of money, but that doesn’t mean it was always that way. They had to earn their success and it was a long, steep and often very thorny road to fulfilling their childhood dream of becoming a footballer.

Source: Biography Online, Biography, Life Bogger, The Famous People