He was born in Lago Agrio (Ecuador) Amazon Jungle, and on the road to Old Trafford he had a lot of “walking barefoot.”
Antonio Valencia had a very difficult childhood, a landscape in black, outlined by poor, and the main occupation of the locals. Lago Agrio is where the famous Texaco company is extracting petrol.
To survive and to cope with costs that will allow him to play football, Valencia was forced to do all sorts of activities. A search for empty bottles and sold them to raise money to buy boots. Several years later, the situation would change radically.
At the age of 20 arrived in England at Wigan, on a loan from Villarreal and midfielder relatives said that he was very hard to communicate with someone: “He knew no English, and have serious problems even to read Spanish.”
In 2008, Wigan definitely buy it, and a later season, Alex Ferguson brought him in exchange for 16 million pounds.
On September 15, 2010, Valencia was seriously injured in a Champions League match and the doctors thought the whole season he is doomed.
But the midfielder has returned with a goal on April 9, in the game against Fulham, and Ferguson is convinced that this recovery equation mattered enormously in winning the title.
“This boy is all you need in a player – balance, strength, speed. In addition he is the player with the greatest capacity to think the game” Alex Ferguson said.
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