The difficult life story of a former Manchester United footballer. How did Antonio Valencia get into playing football?

Antonio Valencia was a very underrated footballer by the general public. He spent the most successful period of his career at Manchester United. However, his path to playing football was not an easy one.

If you are born in the 1980s in South America, you don’t have many options for what to do with your life at any given time. Countless people end up in lifelong poverty or involved in the drug trade.

Antonio Valencia grew up in a tiny house with his parents and six other siblings. From a young age, he was used to working very hard for himself.

He helped his family as much as he could. He collected empty bottles on the street, which he then returned for change, and did whatever work he could find.

He didn’t have much free time, but when he did, he played football. Barefoot.

When he was 16, he was offered to join El Nacional, a club in the capital of Ecuador. Antonio embarked on the biggest adventure of his life. He told no one about his decision to try to succeed as a professional footballer.

He borrowed money for a bus from his brother and set off to try his luck in the capital. Valencia didn’t really know where he was going to sleep or what he was going to eat. But ambition drove him on.

He impressed at the club, though, and so his career began. At first, he started as a central midfielder on a salary of $50 a month.

Through hard work and diligence, he worked his way up to the youth club from which he worked his way up to the first team.

In 2005, he won his first Clausura Tournament trophy with the club, which earned him the attention of scouts representing top European clubs. The same year he completed a transfer to Villarreal in Spain, from where he managed to reach Manchester United via Wigan.

Valencia spent ten years in Manchester, during which he played more than three hundred games and won nine trophies.

Source: Transfermarkt, Sportbible