Six contemporary football stars come from poor backgrounds

Unlike Pirlo, Kaka... who were lucky enough to be born into wealthy families, Ronaldo, Ibrahimovic, Alexis Sanchez... all had difficult childhoods, struggling to make a living.

Alexis Sanchez

The Arsenal star comes from a poor family in the Tocopilla mining region. Alexis's father, a miner, left the family when he was a child. The Chilean striker lives with his mother and stepfather in a small wooden house, alongside his younger sister Tamara, 17, older sister Marjorie, 32, and older brother Humberto. To help support his family, Alexis wandered around as a circus performer, begging for spare change from passersby with his dangerous acrobatics.

“Alexis would wash cars or do somersaults for people to earn some change. Sometimes, Alexis was so hungry that he knocked on the neighbors’ doors to ask for bread. But they would mock him and refuse. On those occasions, Alexis would go out and perform tricks to earn money,” Humberto told the Sun (UK) about his younger brother’s difficult childhood. Thanks to his natural talent and determination to escape poverty, Alexis has become the brightest football star in Chile today. Before joining Arsenal last summer, he played for Barca (Spain), Udinese (Italy) and River Plate (Argentina).

Franck Ribery

Ribery was born in Boulogne-sur-Mer, a French city famous for its slums and anarchy, and grew up in the poorest part of the city. When he was two years old, his family was left destitute after a car accident. Ribery survived, but required more than 100 stitches, leaving him with two deep scars on his face – the reason why the midfielder later earned the nickname “Scarface”.

In 2003, at the age of 20, before joining Stade Brestois, Ribery still had to work as a construction worker with his father to earn a living for the family, while also practicing football - a sport that helped him relax after hours of hard work. Ribery and his family's life only turned a new page when he caught the eye of scouts from Metz Club. Ribery then went to Türkiye to play for Galatasaray, was called up to the French national team and then returned home to play for Marseille, before joining Bayern Munich. "If it weren't for football, I would probably have joined the unemployed army like many of my peers in the slums. I can never forget that difficult past of mine," Ribery once shared.

Angel di Maria

Born into a family of three children, Angel Di Maria grew up in Pedriel, a poor city in the Mendoza region of western Argentina. As a child, Di Maria and his two sisters had to help their parents work in the coal mines. He showed early talent for football, but his family was poor so he did not have a decent pair of shoes, and many times he had to go to practice hungry.

That poor past, as Di Maria himself later admitted, gave him a sharpness that his colleagues born into luxury and wealth did not have. This star winger always thought of his family first when earning money. After being transferred from Rosario Central to Benfica, Di Maria advised his father to quit his job as a miner and bought them a new house, fully furnished.

Luis Suarez

Suarez, one of his parents’ seven children, remembers playing soccer barefoot on the rough streets of Salto, a poor city on the banks of the Rio Uruguay, at the age of six. At seven, the family moved to the capital, Montevideo, where his father, a porter, hoped to find work to support the family of nine.

But despite growing up in a dirty city with pollution and full of social evils, Suarez still nurtured his will and passion for football. He saw street matches as a place to practice, accumulate technical qualities, cunning and even a bit of instinctive madness that later got him into trouble many times.

At the age of nine, he caught the eye of scouts at the Nationals Club. But his erratic temperament at that time caused this striker's seemingly promising career to soon come to a dead end. Then, a fateful encounter with Sofia Balbi, the woman who would later become his wife, changed Suarez in a positive direction. Love at first sight with Sofia became the motivation for Suarez to try. He rose rapidly after moving to the Netherlands, playing for Groningen and Ajax, before shining at Liverpool and being recruited by Barca last summer.

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Zlatan Ibrahimovic

The current Paris Saint-Germain star was the product of a poor and troubled marriage between his Croatian mother, Jurka Gravic, and his alcoholic Bosnian father, Sefik Ibrahimovic. Like many children born into immigrant families in foreign lands, Ibrahimovic faced discrimination from an early age. His life was further challenged when his parents divorced when he was just two years old.

As Ibrahimovic later recalled, he was a frequent thief as a teenager, having no other choice after being born in a poor immigrant neighbourhood. But it was this difficult life that forged his strong, indomitable will, qualities that grew alongside his footballing talent, which Ibrahimović honed with his friends on the streets.

At the age of 15, despite being a talented young player at Malmo FC, Ibra almost gave up football to work as a porter at the local docks, to earn money to support his mother in her difficult life. But he changed his mind after a coach from the club personally came to his house to convince him to focus on football and see it as a way out of poverty. The rest is history, as Ibra shone at Malmo, catching the eye of scouts at Ajax Amsterdam - the starting point for an adventure through a series of the biggest clubs in Europe later.

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Cristiano Ronaldo

As the world's number one football player, Ronaldo was almost abandoned by his mother, chef Dolores Aveiro, when she was pregnant. His presence in the family's life at that time made life for the family of four even more difficult, leading to his parents' divorce.

At the age of 13, Ronaldo was expelled from school for throwing a chair at a teacher who showed contempt for his poor family background. At that time, the future Real superstar considered quitting school and football to go to work to help his mother support the family. But Dolores did not agree, because she wanted her son to continue with his passion for football.

It was a crucial decision that would change Ronaldo's entire life. He was recruited by Sporting Lisbon at the age of 12 and played for the U16, U17, U18, B team and first team in just one season, 2001-2002, before being bought by Man Utd in the summer of 2003.

According to VnExpress.net