“This is Paulo Dybala’s town,” reads a giant billboard on Ruta Nueve, the road that connects Argentina’s three main cities – Cordoba, Rosario and Buenos Aires.
Paulo Dybala was born in a small town, Laguna Larga’s with 7,500 inhabitants, a town split in two by the main road running through it, with a football club on either side, Sportivo and Newell’s.
Paulo had a parent from both halves of the divide; his mother’s families supported Sportivo, while his father, Adolfo, and grandfather, Boleslaw were Newell’s fans. Paulo started with Sportivo until he received an offer to train with Instituto a bigger team up the road in Cordoba.
Paulo’s dad Adolfo would drive him there, stay until training had finished, and then drive back. Everything fell apart when Paulo’s father was diagnosed with a tumor, Paulo was 15, and he arranged a loan from Instituto back to his hometown to Newell’s so he could stay close to his father in his final days.
After his dad passed away, Paulo Dybala almost quit football.
But he kept going and eventually made a difficult decision that few teenagers would have been able to under those circumstances, to leave his mum and brothers and move back to Cordoba, to live at Instituto’s youth academy, sleeping in rooms under the stadium’s stands, until he got an accommodation with a couple in their 70s.
In his first season in Italy, Dybala suffered relegation to Serie B, but his development did not stop.
He moved from Instituto to Palermo, after 2years Paulo Dybala decided to move from Palermo to Juventus to test himself against the very best. On June 2015, he joined Juventus and scored a goal in every 151 minutes in his debut season surpassing the goal scoring ratios of Carlos Tevez and Del Piero’s in their debut season.
He has made over 100 appearances with Juventus, has over 100 career goals amongst many individual honours. “…I was hoping that my father would recover, Today, I dream about him and wake up in tears”
Paulo Dybala was ready to endure anything in order to fulfil his dreams and the promise he had made to his dad; that he would make it. “…I dedicate my goals to my father.
His dream was to see me on the football field. I know that my father is proud of me…”- Paulo Dybala
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