Rodri picks the most important moment of his career: "After that, my mentality changed"

Rodri Hernández, Ballon d'Or winner, gave a candid interview with Spanish radio station COPE, where he talked about many, many different things. He said that he wasn't hurt by Vini's absence from the ceremony ("why would I be hurt"), he considers Erling Haaland as the most decisive player right now, and even considers returning to the pitch with Manchester City this season, as a challenge for him.

At 28, he has won Champions League 2023, UEFA Euro Cup 2024 with Spain, and a good bunch of Premier League titles since he joined City in 2019. His career has been stellar despite him being a relatively unknown public figure, without social networks.

However, his career was almost killed before it even began. He wanted to quit. It was a phone call conversation with his father that changed his mind, and for Rodri that is the most important moment of his career.

Aged seventeen, he left his local team and travelled to a youth academy in Villareal, to fight for the chance to play professionally. "I remember calling my father crying with the feeling that everything was over. That I had invested my whole life to achieve it and it seemed like the dream was fading away. He told me if we have come this far, we are not going to throw in the towel. We are going to go all the way", he said in his Ballon d'Or acceptance speech.

In the radio interview, he added more context to that moment, that came after bad sporting moments as well as a "not ideal" context of growing up in an academy with other 100 kids: "I wanted to leave football altogether. I was sink because of all I had sacrificed and then seeing that it wasn't working".

"After that moment, something changed in my mentality. As if I had nothing to loose, so I just kept going, until today".

"I think one of the most important things a kid has to go through before joining professional football is to go through good and bad moments in particular", he added. "If you don't go through bad moments during your career in youth football, you may not be ready for it when they happen in professional football".