Yan Diomande’s biggest fan and believer was always his late sister, Roxane: “I try to trust God’s plan. It’s all I can do. I don’t try to forget, because I know I won’t forget. All I can do is use the pain to work harder, and to do everything we dreamed about. I wrote this because I can’t speak about it. I wrote this because I want you to know that I will make sure that you live on. I will make sure that everybody knows your name. The whole world. Everything I do on a football pitch, it’s for you. So much has happened since I last saw you…… You would not even believe it. I don’t know if I believe it. You know what’s crazy? After my debut against Madrid, I actually swapped shirts with Mbappé. Remember when we used to watch him on TV, and you’d say, ‘Mbappé? Yeah, he’s good. But my brother is better.’ I was wrong about one thing. I don’t want to be rich. I see what it does to people, even to family. When I was at Leganés, everything I was earning, I was sending home. It got to the point where I didn’t even want money anymore. It was just a burden. They never stopped asking. I guess they thought I was a millionaire already. I didn’t even have an apartment. I was living at the training ground in a room with no TV. Just football and sleep, football and sleep. I didn’t want a big house. I didn’t want cars. I just wanted to put everything into football. Everything to show the world that my sister was right.” playerstribu.ne/Diomande

As he was coming back from injury, @Arsenal and @SEFutbol midfielder Mikel Merino made it his mission to play in the World Cup. He wrote this for the people who helped him along the way. theplayerstribune.com/mikel-…

Today, Edin Džeko plays his final match for Bosnia and Herzegovina: “One day when I was 19, another coach turned up and said he wanted to bring me to the Czech Republic. I didn’t want to leave Bosnia, but he told me that I’d have a better chance to fulfil my dream there. To be honest, I didn’t even know what my dream was. I just wanted to get better. I had this belief in myself. The strongest part of my body was my mind. When I arrived at Teplice, I told myself, Edin, you have to outwork these guys, or else they will send you away. They had bought me for 25,000 euros. About two years later, I signed for Wolfsburg. When we played Milan, I swapped shirts with Sheva. Then Manchester City signed me for 37 million. Then I joined Roma. I grew up with war. Suddenly, I was living a fairy tale. Nothing is ever impossible. Not even taking Bosnia to the World Cup. Do you remember 2014? Most of you were probably not born yet. But when we qualified for our first World Cup, it was the greatest day of our lives. I remember we played the decisive qualifier at this old stadium in Lithuania, and when the referee blew the final whistle, a bunch of Bosnians started jumping over the walls to run out onto the pitch. But the walls were like two metres high, and they had to jump down onto the concrete. I remember turning around and seeing them all running towards us and thinking, My God, these guys are crazy. And then I saw one guy running a little slower than the rest. He was limping towards me with tears in his eyes. It was my father. I said, ‘Dad, what happened?’ He said, ‘I hurt my foot when I landed. But don’t worry. Right now, I feel no pain!’ We just hugged and cried. Unfortunately, luck was not on our side in Brazil. You won’t remember this, but I scored a goal against Nigeria that should have stood, and there was no VAR in those days, so we went out of our group. But at least our little country got to play at the Maracanã. At least we showed the world who we are.” playerstribu.ne/Dzeko @EdDzeko | @NFSBiH

Arsenal captain Kim Little: “There are some things you can’t protect yourself from. Sometimes my career has looked like smooth sailing — looking back at it now, sometimes I’m even tricked into thinking that. But maybe that’s more about how I’ve dealt with things than what’s actually happened to me. There have been a lot of setbacks. I didn’t really have an injury until I was 26, when I did my ACL. But after that, there were quite a few. Surgeries on my foot, my knee. I broke my leg. Bigger hamstring injuries. Broken fingers. Periods where you’re out for a while, desperately trying to get back. And I think every time something like that happens, I never really let myself sit in it for too long. It was always: Okay, this is where I’m at now — what do I need to do to get back? Over time, that’s what’s allowed me to come back from those moments and still perform at a high level. But that mentality can’t protect you from everything…. This isn’t something I’ve ever really shared openly before. But I want to share it now, because I think it’s important that people see the other side of it.... They just see the games. Maybe they see the injuries. But the challenges aren’t always physical. There have been two significant periods in my career when I’ve been depressed and on antidepressants. Times when even getting out of bed felt hard. Playing felt impossible. And somehow, I was still doing it. I don’t know how. Still training. Still playing at the highest level. I look back at those periods and …. I honestly don’t really know how I found the strength to get through all that. I think part of it was a sense of responsibility. Even when things don’t feel right, you still show up. You still go in. You still do the work. If you can’t do it for yourself, you do it for the team. For the people around you. I wouldn’t wish those experiences on anyone. But when you come out the other side of it…. You learn so much about yourself. You realise how strong you are. How resilient. And you realise what matters most to you. I don’t like to dwell on it, but it changed me. I feel so much more aware of what’s happening around me now. It’s helped me as a leader. When I’m around the group every day, I can sense when someone’s not quite themselves. When their frequency changes. Obviously you don’t always know what it is, and you can’t always fix it. But that awareness… Seeing someone in pain and letting them know you see them. It’s a start. What I understand more than anything now is that none of this happens on your own.” playerstribu.ne/Little @ArsenalWFC | @UWCL

Pedri: “It’s interesting, because in the Canary Islands, we are very laid back in everything else we do. The Canarian player has a certain rhythm on the pitch. We have a way of having fun and not feeling the pressure. We do whatever comes to our mind. I think that’s why so many creative players come from here. I remember my father used to take me to training early in the morning after working in the restaurant all night. And he’d always have to stop at the gas station for his coffee on the way. I was always freaking out. ’Dad, we’re going to be late. We can’t stop today.’ And he’d say, in his Canarian way…. ‘Relax, the good players are always late.’ ‘I’m not Ronaldinho! The coach is going to be mad.’ ‘We’re fine. Chill.’ He has a great perspective on life. He was a really good keeper when he was young, but he had to give up his dream when my grandfather passed away so that he could run the restaurant. My dad and my uncle were the only servers, until my brother got old enough and they recruited him. They actually never made me work. They saw something special in me, and I was always allowed to go outside and play football after school. Except one day! One famous day! I think I was 13 years old. There was a town festival, and my uncle is actually a stand-up comedian. To me, he’s Pepe. But to the audience, he transforms into Don José. I can’t even give you a joke, because it’s all Canarian humor, and unless you’re from my island, it wouldn’t land. But he had to go do a show during the festival, and so my dad called me in to lend a hand when things got busy. I said, ‘Sure, no problem. How hard could it be? I’m a footballer.’ Well…. Running with a ball is very different from standing behind the bar. Oh my God. I was behind the bar, filling drinks. That was my job. My dad would come running over, and he would yell the orders to me. ‘OK, give me 2 Cokes, a Fanta, and 3 beers.’ 2 Cokes, a Fanta…. Before I could get the Cokes in the glasses with the ice and the straws, he would be coming back. ‘OK, give me 2 glasses of wine, a Fanta, and 3 Cokes. Hurry.’ My head was spinning. My legs were aching. I said, ‘Dad, when is the break?’ He said, ‘Break? What break? This isn’t football.’ At the end of the night, I was so sore. My dad said, ‘So how did you like it?’ I said, ‘Honestly? I have so much respect for you and Pepe. I am broken.’ My career at Tasca Fernando was over after one night, thank God. I put everything into football.” playerstribu.ne/Pedri @Pedri | @FCBarcelona | @SEFutbol

Robert Lewandowski: “When I began playing football as a five-year-old, there were no teams for kids my age in Leszno, so I had to play with kids who were two years older. It was tough, because I was very shy and skinny, and two years is a big deal at that age. For many years I also played for a team in Warsaw, and I had to travel one hour each way to get to training. If I didn’t have parents who were willing to drive me there, my football dream would have been over before it even began. They were both P.E. teachers, and my dad happened to be my P.E. teacher. So after school he would drive me to training, wait two hours for my session to finish and then drive me home. The club had no changing rooms, so I’d often run around in the rain and come back into the car covered in mud. Then we’d drive through the dark and get home at 10 o’clock. So yeah, it was a four-hour trip for my dad, just so I could train. Some other parents thought he was crazy. They really did. I’m not kidding. I literally heard other parents ask my parents, ‘Why are you doing this?’ They never said it was because they wanted their kid to turn pro. Instead they would say it was because Robert has a dream and he loves this game. It was never like, ’Oh, we have to do everything for Robert so that he’ll turn pro and reach the top and we’ll get rich.’ Never. You know, a lot of parents put pressure on their kids to succeed. I have seen fathers stand on the sidelines shouting at 10-year-olds. That wasn’t good motivation when I was a kid. And it still isn’t. Because those parents don’t know what it’s like to be an athlete. They don’t get that your love for football has to come from the heart. Even when I was young, there were already some people who believed I was too small and skinny to make it. Haters, as the kids say now! But my parents always encouraged me to think for myself, to ignore what other people were saying. They would always tell me this one thing, and it took me years to understand what they meant. They would say, ‘Robert … trust your instincts.’ It’s a good lesson for a striker, or for anyone really.” playerstribu.ne/Lewandowski @lewy_official | @ChicagoFire

Cole Palmer in 2022: “I don’t like admitting it to him, but Dad taught me everything about football growing up. He was Pep before I met Pep. You see, the other really early memory I have is when I was like four or five and my dad used to take me over the road to the park opposite our house in Wythenshawe. I remember walking with him through the gates, past the cage and skate ramps to this little patch of grass. He would throw the ball up and I would just control it, over and over again. Control it and then protect it. He used to say, ‘No point trying to shoot if you can’t keep hold of the ball in the first place.’ We would do that every single day whatever the weather — and my dad’s family is from St Kitts and Nevis in the Caribbean. He hates going out in the cold. But he’d do it for me anyway. That’s why I got the St Kitts flag on my boots, as a little tribute to him and his family. As I got older, I was always one of the smallest in my age group — I can show you photos where everyone else in the team looks giant and I’m dead small. It always frustrated me. I was like, ‘I want to be big and strong,’ but Dad was like, ‘Nah, you don’t. You need to be small to learn how to use your skill.’ These days whenever I’m dribbling and using my body to protect the ball, his advice pops into my head. He brought out that obsession in me when I was little, but it’s weird, I didn’t ever think, I want to be a footballer. I was just so focussed on playing for fun, just being me.” playerstribu.ne/ColePalmer

Gabriel Martinelli in 2022: “I thank God that I came to Arsenal in 2019. I really believe that things happen for a reason, and I’m so happy here. It’s funny to look back now, because I could so easily have ended up somewhere else. You see, I used to be part of this project at Manchester United. I was actually there for several trials. I even met many of the senior players. When I was 17, I had my last session there, so I went back to Brazil waiting for news. One day my dad called me into the living room. He had spoken to my agent and … well, United had said no. Not just, ’No, for this year.’ But, ‘No, we don’t want him. At all.’ To be honest, I was shaken. They had seen me play several times, and I was sure they were going to sign me, you know? A few weeks later I got another trial, at Barcelona. I spent 15 days there. They didn’t want me either. That was easier to accept, because it was just one trial. Still…. I remember sitting down with my dad and saying, ‘What are we going to do?’ You cannot really understand my story without knowing about my dad, João. He is as invested in my career as I am. When I was a toddler, he decided to take me to a trial at Corinthians when I turned six years old. Just to make sure you get this, that is one of the biggest clubs in Brazil. Who does that? He had wanted to turn pro but it hadn’t worked out, and now he wanted me to make it. Dads are supposed to read their sons bedtime stories. My dad kept saying, ‘When you turn six, I’ll take you….’ Hahaha. He didn’t even know whether I would be good enough. All we had done was play on a worn-down court near our home in Guarulhos, São Paulo. The goals didn’t even have nets. I’d jump on my dad’s back, we’d walk down to the court and when we got there I’d say, ‘Dad, let’s dribble! Let’s play!’ He would be like, ‘No, no. We’re gonna train your left foot.’ Left foot!!! I had not even turned six! He was serious. He was the goalie, he threw the ball out and I would shoot and shoot and shoot and shoot. Ten shots … a hundred shots … a thousand shots…. Man, I’d always complain about it. ‘Come on, Dad….” What a pain!’“ playerstribu.ne/Martinelli @gabimartinelli | @Arsenal

Unai Emery’s arrival at @AVFCOfficial brought the club to another level. Ahead of the Europa League final, @EzriKonsa wrote: “The first thing he told us when he arrived was, ‘I’m not here to waste time.’ Right away, he changed our mentality. No more being mid-table. He wanted titles. He wanted to get into Europe. It’s funny because after the first few months, he sat me down and said, ‘Look, I really wasn’t sure about you.’ He told me that I could play for England one day, but only if I was willing to put in the work and really believe in myself. He actually told a reporter once that he believes more in me than I believe in myself. That kind of hit home. From that point on, I wanted to work 10 times as hard.... There was another moment when we lost out on the Champions League last year, and we got back into the dressing room, and it was like a funeral. Guys on the bench, staring into the air. I’m sitting there with my shirt pulled over my head, wanting to disappear into the ground. The boss began to speak, and then he started to tear up. He was telling us how proud he was of us, and how hard we’d worked, and how much commitment we’d shown. We had never seen him open up like that. I had even more respect for him after that. He just loves what he’s doing, and he cares so deeply for his players. We’re lucky to have Unai Emery as our boss. Playing for him, you can see why he has won so much. When we conceded that late goal in Paris last season, he was kicking stuff in the dressing room. But then he told us how much he believed in us, and when you look at him, and you feel his energy, all you want to do is play the second leg. Even when we went 2–0 down at Villa Park, we didn’t lose faith. They were probably thinking, Who the f*** are Villa? But in that second half, I think they got scared of what we managed to do. When I scored, you could hear the noise 10 miles away from Villa Park. We may have lost the tie, but we beat PSG that night. We showed what we can do when we stick together and believe in ourselves.” playerstribu.ne/Konsa

Willian Pacho: “When you hear @PSG_inside, you don’t even think. You get out your phone and you search for flights. I’ll fly Ryanair. When is the next one? Vamos. Luís Campos invited me to a secret dinner in Madrid, and it was in this underground restaurant, like in the movies. Within five minutes, he said, ‘Hold on, someone wants to speak to you.’ He put Luis Enrique on FaceTime. It was so cool. Luis Enrique, he has a way about him. An aura, I guess. To me, he is the key to everything that I have achieved at PSG. I say that as a man, and not as a footballer. He speaks very little, but when he speaks, you feel that he understands you as a person. For me, after everything that I had been through, he’s exactly the kind of manager that I needed. He told me when he brought me in, ‘Go at your own pace. Don’t feel like you need to prove anything to anyone just because we bought you. You still have to develop.’ In giving me time, it took the pressure off. In giving me time, I exploded. I never could have expected to become a starter so quickly. I never could have expected two Champions League titles in two seasons. I never could have expected the love that I received from the fans. It went from, ‘51? Who is 51?’ To ‘PACHO! PACHO! PACHO!’ I will never forget being on FaceTime with my siblings before the Champions League Final against Inter. They said, ‘No matter what happens, we’re going to love you. All you need to do is fight for every single ball. Don’t worry about what comes after.’ In the 20th minute, I headed the ball back toward our goal and it was going to go out for a corner, and I said, ‘No, you can’t lose a single ball. You promised.’ I jumped up for it over the Inter player like I was in a kung-fu movie. Everyone posts that photo of me now, because I saved the ball and it started the counter-attack for our second goal. People ask me, ‘Bro, what were you thinking when you went for that?’ The answer is nothing. I was not thinking. I was just playing without fear. Now you know my story, and you know where that comes from. It comes from a place of pain and grief. But I came out the other side, into the light. When the match was over and we were champions, the first thing I said to myself was: Thank you, God. Thank you, mom. If only you could see this.” playerstribu.ne/Pacho

“I remember looking down into the abyss and just thinking.... Mamá, I don’t want to be here without you.” @PSG_inside star Willian Pacho is using this moment to tell his story of grief, mental health and redemption. theplayerstribune.com/willia…

“Before I even had real boots, you were telling everybody, ‘My brother is going to be the best in the world!’” When no one wanted to sign him, Yan Diomande’s sister, Roxane, never doubted her brother’s talent. He wrote this letter to his late sister to prove that all their dreams would be achieved, and, now, he’s playing for @realmadrid. theplayerstribune.com/yan-di…

Mallory Swanson in 2019: “GOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLL!!! You would hear that sound in my house a lot as a kid. On any regular day, it’d just be my typical Colorado family, hanging out together in our quiet little house. But then….. GOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLL!!! That sound — that word — would come blaring out of the bright-pink, 13-inch Hello Kitty TV we had rigged up in my bedroom. And not too long after that, it would come blaring out of me. GOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLL!!! Sorry, Mom and Dad, for leaving so many balls around for you to trip on. GOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLL!!! Sorry, Mom and Dad, for breaking almost everything you owned anytime an impromptu game broke out inside the house. GOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLL!!! Sorry, Mom and Dad, for nutmegging you, constantly, and without warning, when you were just trying to relax. I say sorry, of course, but my mom and dad understood. My older sister, Brianna, too. I didn’t even like the color pink or Hello Kitty (no offense to the color pink or Hello Kitty), but I was just so desperate to watch soccer that I didn’t care what TV it was on, or what language the call was in, when I did it. And I was just so desperate to get out and PLAY soccer — to run around and play anything, really — that I didn’t care what sort of damage I left behind. The scar on my forehead? I got it from — guess what — running around too much. I think I was four or five, and I was at my sister’s softball practice, playing on the monkey bars off to the side. And I’m sure I was challenging myself to try some fancy new jump or trick on the bars. Surprise, I slipped and busted my head open. Apparently I didn’t even cry or scream when it happened. I was just this…… wild kid, and getting hurt was part of the deal. And that probably should’ve been the end of it — the hospital, the stitches, hugs from Mom and Dad — but literally a week after I got my stitches out, I was back outside: dribbling a soccer ball around by myself at our neighbor’s house. And then suddenly their dog just started CHASING me. So I started booking it. I’m talking top speed. Down my street, back to my house, and eventually I made it to the garage. Double-checked to see if the dog (which apparently was a nice, harmless golden retriever) had followed me and BOY HOWDY was it still behind me. I shot off again and started running and — BOOM. Smacked my head on the side-mirror of my parents’ car. Split it all the way open again. They took me back to the hospital, and the staff there got really concerned about how I had split my head twice in such a short period of time — you know, questioning my mom and dad to see if they were doing anything suspicious at home or whatever. And my parents (sorry, guys) were just like, ‘Umm…… no….. we just have a reckless child on our hands, who can’t stop playing.’ The reckless child who can’t stop playing. That’s me!” playerstribu.ne/Mallory @MalPugh | @theChicagoStars

Everything Yan Diomande does on the pitch is for his late sister, Roxane: “I never got any answers. I don’t know if I want to know why. Maybe it was jealousy. Maybe it’s just something that happens in our country. Maybe I could have protected you. I don’t know. I try to trust God’s plan. It’s all I can do. I don’t try to forget, because I know I won’t forget. All I can do is use the pain to work harder, and to do everything we dreamed about. I wrote this because I can’t speak about it. I wrote this because I want you to know that I will make sure that you live on. I will make sure that everybody knows your name. The whole world. Everything I do on a football pitch, it’s for you. So much has happened since I last saw you…… You would not even believe it. I don’t know if I believe it. You know what’s crazy? After my debut against Madrid, I actually swapped shirts with Mbappé. Remember when we used to watch him on TV, and you’d say, ‘Mbappé? Yeah, he’s good. But my brother is better.’ I was wrong about one thing. I don’t want to be rich. I see what it does to people, even to family. When I was at Leganés, everything I was earning, I was sending home. It got to the point where I didn’t even want money anymore. It was just a burden. They never stopped asking. I guess they thought I was a millionaire already. I didn’t even have an apartment. I was living at the training ground in a room with no TV. Just football and sleep, football and sleep. I didn’t want a big house. I didn’t want cars. I just wanted to put everything into football. Everything to show the world that my sister was right.” playerstribu.ne/Diomande

“Thank God for football.” —Rodri