History is made by Darwin Nunez. The 22-year-old Uruguayan striker has been linked with a move to Liverpool for 65 million euros, a move that Anfield club has not bought with so much money, except for one Virgil von Dyke. Liverpool has so far spent around Tk 630 crore as the currency of Bangladesh behind Nuneiz. But the striker who spread the light for Benfica was in doubt about whether he would become a footballer even five years ago.
Nuneiz suffered a knee ligament rupture while playing for Uruguay's U-20 team. Many doubts arose in Nunez's mind as to whether he could recover from his injury and become a footballer at all. So much so that he wanted to give up his dream of becoming a footballer.
Inspired by Uruguay's youth coach Fabian Coito, Nunez did not make that decision. Liverpool can give a thank you to Koito!
And like ten emerging Uruguayan footballers, Nunez's family was very poor. But lack of money could not stand in the way of Nuneiz's dream of becoming a footballer. Nunez also learned to be a footballer after seeing his brother Jr. in Artiga, a small town on the Brazil-Uruguay border.
The junior was quite talented, catching the eye of Jose Pardomo, the youth team coach of the famous Uruguayan club Peniral. Pardomo took Junior to Montevideo, the capital of the country, 400 miles from Artiga. After enrolling the junior in the youth team of Peniral, he looked at his younger brother Nuneiz. Nuniez's mother, Sylvia, did not want to send her youngest son away, as she had sent a child to a town hundreds of miles away to become a footballer. But in the end Pardomo's interest did not go away.
Ignoring the tension in the family, Nunez has started to show a glimpse of talent for Peniral. The striker tore the ligament while playing for the youth team of Peniral.
The level of injury was so high, it is doubtful whether he will be a footballer at all in the future. An injury that is supposed to heal in six months, takes eighteen months to heal. In those days, his elder brother started trying to become a policeman by eliminating junior football. Nuneiz was thinking about whether to give up football in the way of his elder brother. That's when Koito emerged as the savior.
In an interview with the Daily Mail, Pardomo said of Quito's contribution: "It simply came to our notice then. He was emotionally broken. Was not back in form from injury. However, ignoring the criticism of the people, Uruguay's U-20 team coach Koito kept calling him to the team.
Nunez has scored just two goals in the 2019 Under-20 World Cup in Poland, but Nunez has been fascinated by his footsteps. Coito was a seasoned juror, according to Nunez, who moved from Penelope to Almeria in Benfica in a career that has been slowly gaining momentum since the World Cup.