This is Antoine Griezmann, a famous football striker, who has gone through amazing challenges in his life. Subject to the criticism and disappointment of people in his daily life and experiencing the contrast of fame and disapproval, his is the amazing story of one of the best French football players in history.
This amazing player was born in Macon, France. His mother, Isabel, a former hospital staff member was a Portuguese descent and his father Mario Lopez was a football player. They both made an insufficient amount of money for Antoine to really develop academically. He couldn't develop in lots of things but the one thing that most punished and scared him, was the possibility of never being tall or not being able to play professionally because of his height. This was an incredibly big deal when at the age of 15 he started to do the football tests for football teams. These teams wanted the footballers to be at least 1,80m and fast runners. He thought that his dream of being a footballer would never come true.
He thought this because as he wanted to be the best, he compared himself with the best. He already knew about his height problem but the news of the doctor hit him even harder, he was not going to be very tall. I’m sure he wanted to burst into tears because his dreams of being the best football player in the world were going up in flames. Or were they?
From that moment Griezmann wanted even more desperately to be the one who would make French history so he trained twice as hard and didn't let his thoughts or exhaustion make him stop.
Although his coaches did not appreciate him, he was determined. His dad always took him to go to the Olympic de Lyon stadium to see his favourite player, Sonny Anderson. 'Every time I went to see a match, I could see my future' he declared in L’equipe, a French newspaper, years later. Even though he made such progress, he was rejected, but as you have seen in the past paragraphs, his ambition was unstoppable.
So he decided to try to see if he could get signed with the football team 'Montpellier'. This time, with much luck, he began to play in the low categories of the team, but that changed when Éric Olhats saw him for the first time in a match. He described Griezmann as an extraordinary player with characteristics that no one had ever had before. Éric was a known professional scout who gathered players to sign for Real Sociedad. Griezmann played in nearly all the categories in this humble team. This made him very loved and he started to score goals in the first team. He developed into an amazing player even to the point of scoring in a league the same goals as Karim Benzema. Every team wanted him but Atletico De Madrid was at the top on the list. Atletico decided that their offer was going to be 30 million euros. Griezmann accepted and it was the start of a new era.
He was incredibly well received at Atletico's stadium, but now he had to do the difficult - to satisfy the fans, (this was and is a very difficult job to do in Madrid). But as Griezmann showed in his early life, he tried his best and didn’t give up even when the difficult times came. His first season was marvellous and the Atlético de Madrid fans were amazed by his fast adaptation. Here was the problem though; they started to speculate about him and with the speculations came the disappointment of the crowd in some matches.
He played for Atlético de Madrid for five years before he decided he wanted a change. This change was to be transferred to F.C Barcelona for 120 million euros. This angered the Atlético de Madrid fans very much but what made them even more disappointed was the fact that he made a documentary about the fact he had decided not to move in January but at the same time had signed a contract to say that he would leave at the end of the season and if he rejected the offer the club would have to pay Barça 40 million euros. This deceit obviously made Atletico’s fans very angry.
Antoine played one bitter year with Barça scoring 33 goals in 93 matches and then, regretful of his decision, Barcelona and Griezmann himself decided to loan him back to Atlético de Madrid for two years with the option of buying him for 40 million euros at the end of it. Now, he is in Atlético de Madrid scoring goals and playing like the Balon D’or he should surely be.
Martin I, Year 7
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