Vinicius jr.
There are two fundamental pillars in the life of Vicinicius, according to himself: God, who is everything to him, and the family. l he feels blessed by God.
In his social networks, God is present and from time to time he publishes a biblical quote to express his state of mind or what he feels at that moment.
Thus, when he was injured at Real Madrid and had to be off the pitch for two months, Vinicius Jr. wrote a verse from the prophet Isaiah on his Twitter account: “Do not be afraid, because I am with you; do not worry, because I am your God. I strengthen you, I help you, I uphold you with my victorious right hand.”
In another bad moment, he quoted the book of Joshua: “What I command you is to have courage and be brave. Do not be afraid or dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you.”
But he not only remembers God in the bad times but especially in the good ones. When I passed the medical examination with Real Madrid, I wrote this: “Dear God, thank you for listening to me, protecting me and doing everything to see me smile.”
Or when he spoke to the media after scoring a goal. “Very happy for the goal and for helping the team. Glory to God for everything!”
Vinicius Jr. had a good 2020/2021 season at Real Madrid, but 2021/2022 was exceptional, where he was decisive in many games with his 17 goals. In May 2022, Real Madrid won its fourteenth Champions League, with some very outstanding and decisive performances by Vinicius Jr. Until now, “Vini” has won six titles as a Real Madrid player: one Champions League, two Spanish Super Cups, two Leagues and a Club World Cup. With joy, he continues to play this 2022/2023 season and thanking God very much for it.
Luka modric
Luka has won everything with Real Madrid: Leagues, Champions League, Copa del Rey, Spanish Super Cup, European Super Cup and Club World Cup. In addition, as captain of Croatia, he managed to take his team to the final of the last World Cup in Russia in 2018. Thanks to this, he also managed to be the Golden Ball that year, an award that recognizes the best player in the world in that season.
Luka is a practicing Catholic and before going out onto the pitch, he kisses a photo on one of his shin guards 7 times. In said photo, his wife and his three children appear, as well as the Sacred Heart of Jesus above them. Each kiss is dedicated to a member of his family, and the seventh is for the Sacred Heart of Jesus, as he himself explains.
Luka has a discreet private life, far from his great fame. He has not staged any scandal. He focuses on football, a job he loves, and on his family, which he considers a fundamental pillar of his life.
Luka Modric has been renewed for another year with Real Madrid, until June 30, 2023.
Thank God for this and for all the successes he has achieved.
matthew kovacic
Mateo Kovacic is a Croatian footballer who plays as a midfielder for Chelsea Football Club in the English Premier League. He has played in very important teams such as Real Madrid, Inter Milan or Danamo Zagreb. He is an international with the Croatian national team and represented it at the 2014 Brazil and 2018 Russia World Cups, as well as at Euro 2016.
Kovacic is a practicing Catholic and is one of the players who most expresses his Catholic faith on social networks. Mateo dedicated the silver medal he won at the 2018 World Cup in Russia to Saint Anthony of Padua, the saint of his town’s parish, in a gesture that moved social networks. He received the award wearing a banner on his back with the image of San Antonio de Padua and the church that bears his name in Sesvete, the town where he grew up. In this same church he was an altar boy and met his wife Isabel. After the ceremony, Kovacic took a photo wearing the banner in the locker room at the Luzhniki stadium in Moscow.
Previously, after winning the World Cup semifinal match against England, Mateo posted on Instagram a photograph of the Croatian flag with a Christ and a small image of the Virgin with the text “Thank you, my God” in Croatian.
In addition, on the occasion of Holy Week 2017, he published the image of a cross and a crown of thorns with the message “he himself bore our sins in his body on the cross. Have a blessed Easter everyone.”
Chicharito
Javier “Chicharito” Hernndez is the Mexican soccer player of the moment. After becoming one of the sensations of English football with his great performances at Manchester United (where in December 2012 he was chosen as the best player in the Premier League), and after passing through Real Madrid and Sevilla FC, he was signed by Los Angels Galaxy of the United States.
However, not only his football and his goals have impressed the English and Spanish, but the deep faith and humility of this young footballer have set him as an example for the young. He already appears in the lists of the most religious athletes in the world.
He always talks about God
Despite fame and money, Chicharito has not lost his way and is very clear about where he comes from and where he is going. He has never hidden his fervent Catholic faith, in fact, he is surprised by the number of times he speaks of God. In each and every one of his interviews and public appearances he gives thanks for what he has and for the opportunity to play football.
The most striking and well-known image of this footballer occurs before each game when he kneels with his eyes closed and his arms open while praying. “I always pray on the pitch before a game. It’s an important routine for me but it’s not superstition,” he says. “I like to pray, I can talk to God and tell him to take care of the health of both teams.”
An angel in the “red devils”
Interestingly, this “angel” who prays for teammates and rivals provides his services in the historic Manchester United, popularly known throughout the world as the “red devils”, the red devils. An angel among demons.
Despite this, his religiosity caused him several problems in British football. He suffered threats from the protesters of the Rangers for his Catholic devotion and even different classes tried to convince him not to pray in public so as not to heat up the atmosphere.
proud to be catholic
This faith that he displays has questioned fans and journalists in England. But she is clear about it: “I’m a Catholic, I’m not ashamed to say it. In my house I received a Catholic education, my grandmother is above all very Catholic and she is the base of our family”. And it is that his grandmother, doa Lucha, instilled in him from a young age his love for the Catholic Church and the Virgin Mary, something that this successful soccer player has not forgotten.
God and family, the key to success
Family is the most important thing for him and the one that has given him stability in a world as complicated as that of football. In an interview, he was asked to define success in three words and he did not hesitate: “God, family, perseverance”.
If he has already managed to succeed in football, his dream since he was a child, now he is on his way to achieving his second, which is getting married and becoming a father. Despite the success, he continues with his lifelong girlfriend. “I want to be a husband, I want to be a father of a family, but everything in due time. God is going to decide that, and when it is, it will obviously change my whole life.”
thankful to God
Like his faith, the humility he shows on a day-to-day basis leaves no one in Manchester indifferent. Chicharito relates that “I consider myself a person fulfilling his dreams, fighting for what I have always dreamed of since I was a child, doing what I always wanted…but there will be no profession, no job, no achievements, no money that will make me feel more or less than the others I will always be very grateful to my family and also to God, for having instilled this in me.”
This character has also been forged with different events in his life, which have made him give true importance to things. In fact, he was about to give up football and it was that crisis that brought him to God.
The crisis that changed his life
“I was close to retiring, I had many doubts about whether or not to continue on this path that God had given me. I wasn’t playing much and I was on reserve” and he started to be very sad. At that time, a teammate of his at Chivas, Ramón Morales, thirteen years older than him, helped him enormously. This is how the veteran player relates it: “the way I tried to help him was to tell him that he would trust God a lot, I believe, he believes a lot in God, his family believes. And that God gives when we make an effort, when we do things with honesty, respect and dedication”.
Little by little, in this situation he clung more and more to God and began “to see life from another perspective, to know that if I don’t do well in football I can be happy, that’s when I learned that life is more than your profession, because even if it is your dream, even if you fight for it, it is not everything. This is how I began to enjoy every training session, every minute, every moment of being with my family. I began to enjoy many things beyond football. I became very attached to God and I think that helped me a lot to be able to believe more in him and see life in a different way”.
Wise advice from your grandmother
There is a piece of advice from his grandmother that has accompanied him ever since and that he affirms that he will never forget and that says that “God’s time is perfect and God will know the times for each one”. And the consequences are obvious. After this bump, his career took off. He is the Mexican idol, scorer for his team in the World Cup, who after triumphing in Europe, is doing so in the United States. But without God and his family it would not have been possible. Chicharito does not forget it.
Author of the text about Chicharito: Javier Lozano (ReL)
Wayne Rooney,
The famous player of the English national team and Manchester United, wears a Rosary in all his training sessions and affirms that he could have been a priest.
Rooney was raised in the Catholic faith, as he is of Irish descent. Rooney’s paternal grandparents settled on the outskirts of Liverpoool. In fact, the player’s resistance, some attribute to his humble origins in a mainly Catholic neighborhood of Irish immigrants. Thousands of Irish people live there. Wayne was born in Croxteth, a suburb of the city of Liverpool and grew up in the area known as Scotland Road or Scotty.
Across from the San Juan Bosco College for Girls was the De La Salle Brothers’ Catholic High School for Boys, where Rooney studied and honed his soccer skills. He made his debut in professional football as a 16-year-old student, defending English side Everton.
Rooney has gone through a process of maturity since he started playing football in 2002. With close to 350 official matches for Everton and Manchester, Wayne recognized that the experience of faith has transformed him; and although he has been censured for talking about this, in an interview with the Daily Mail newspaper he said: “I pray for my family before each game, because I am a believer” and adds: “I do not ask (God) to help me score goals, but I do it to intercede for my health and that of those of us on the field of play”.
This show of faith has been with him since he was a child, when he attended Our Lady and St. Swithin’s Roman Catholic Primary School in Liverpool, where his favorite subject, he says, was religion. “He would draw pictures of God at school and tell my parents about it most nights.” Even in The Sunday Times, the player revealed that he “might have been…