Goal.com Weekend Special: Rags-to-Riches Tales – Part I

The players are in no particular order.

1. Diego Armando Maradona

Raised in the shanty town of Villa Fiorito, Diego Armando Maradona had to share one room with seven siblings. Deprived of education and life's taken-for-granted comforts, El Diego had a severely difficult childhood. For him football was the only comfort in his life; shirtless and barefoot, the little kid was blessed with a magical left foot that he used to frightening extent to sear his way through the footballing forest to become arguably the greatest ever footballer in the world.

2. Rivaldo

Rivaldo is a Brazilian legend who became the 1999 European Footballer of the Year and went onto win the World Cup with Brazil in 2002, but the former FC Barcelona star had a very tough childhood. As a child, he was so malnourished that he lost several teeth and was extremely thin, even when he has become a teenager. His father was killed in a road accident in 1989 but that didn't stop Rivaldo from making it big in football. The rest, as they say, is history.

3. Antonio Cassano

Born in Bari, abandoned by his father when he was very small, raised by a single mother in one of the most dangerous neighborhoods of Italy, Antonio Cassano didn't have a dream-like life until he was into his late teens. Since his barging onto the football stage with modest side Bari, Cassano has been in the headlines as much for the right reasons as for the wrong. 'Peter Pan' hasn't really fulfilled the astounding talent he was born with but he is still one of the finest players in Italy. As Cassano writes in his autobiography, “I spent the first 17 years of my life dirt-poor. Then I spent nine years living the life of a millionaire. That means I need another eight years living the way I do now and then I’ll be even.”

4. Carlos Tevez

Carlos Tevez was raised in the crime-ridden neighborhood of Fuerte Apache and was born in a pretty much less than well off family. Yet a severely deprived childhood couldn't eclipse Tevez's footballing talent and the Argentine went onto become one of the finest strikers in South America, earning a move to England's West Ham United, whom he almost single-handedly saved from relegation from the Premier League. An important figure at Manchester United in two trophy-winning years spent there, Tevez is now at Manchester City and looks to scale even greater heights.

5. Robert Douglas

Many people in India might not know about Robert Douglas but those who know would marvel at his feat. Douglas played for Scottish giants Celtic and for the Scottish national team but years before that he worked as a bricklayer while playing for Forth Wanderers.

6. Garrincha

Manuel Francisco dos Santos, otherwise known as Garrincha, is a classic rags-to-riches tale in football. Born in Pau Grande with several physical deformities one of them being bent legs, he started working in a local factory when he was 14 and didn't make it into professional football until he was in his late teens. Gifted with perhaps the most devilish dribbling skills ever seen, Garrincha went onto win the World Cup twice with Brazil and scripted his name into the football history books.

7. Roberto Carlos 

As a child, Roberto Carlos used to play barefoot with the ball filled with sand rather than with air and until he turned 20 his family didn't own any vehicle other than a bicycle. Also, as one football writer observed, “.....from an early age he was a sort of human ox, spending hour after hour in the fields alongside his father pushing or pulling outrageously heavy pieces of farm machinery.” Now that same "human ox" is a footballing legend and a free-kick God to many, having won everything there is to be won in the game and having played for the world's biggest club and for the world’s most popular and successful national team.

8. Steve Savidan

Steve Savidan is a relatively unknown figure in world football but his story too is a rags-to-riches tale. A late bloomer, the Frenchman worked as a waste collector and bartender for some time while he was with AS Angouleme in the third tier of French football. Savidan went onto play for AJ Auxerre and also earned a cap for the French national team.

9. Julio Ricardo Cruz

Former Argentine international striker Julio Ricardo Cruz actually worked as a groundskeeper for Argentine club Banfield. One day he was asked by the coach to play in a practice match because of a missing player. Cruz was so impressive in that match that Banfield decided to sign and the rest, as they always, always say, is history.

10. Grafite

2008-2009 season was Edinaldo Batista Libano's 'breakthrough' season as he topscored in the Bundesliga for German club VfL Wolfsburg. Grafite’s 28 goals in the league were a vital force that propelled the Wolves to their first ever German championship, but not so long ago he sold bin-liners in his homeland Brazil and turned professional only after he had turned 22.

Subhankar Mondal