Brazil, Egypt and Ghana are just some of the countries that, in some way, will be represented in Spain – Italy this Thursday. The semi-final that these two teams played in the Euro Cup last, in which the team led by Roberto Mancini ended up eliminating those then led by Luis Enrique on penalties and then became champions against England. Migratory waves in search of better living conditions for parents, grandparents, great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents They make it so that now, in a simple football match, stories intersect that, at the same time, have little and everything to do with each other.
Jorginho
It was precisely Jorge Luiz Frello Filho, known as Jorginho, who scored the final penalty with rare delicacy seen in that series against Spain three years ago. In the final against England he missed, but the goalkeeper, Gianluigi Donnarumma, covered his back, saved the following penalty and the Azzurra were able to establish themselves in Europe. That year, even Jorginho was on the shortlist of nominees for the Ballon d’Or: came third, behind Lionel Messi and Robert Lewandowski.
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But the story of Jorge Luiz Frello Filho with the Italian National Team, with which he conquered a continent playing football, dates back more than 100 years, when in 1896 his great-great-grandfather, Giacomo Frello, made the decision to emigrate from Santa Caterina, a town located in the Veneto region. , northern province of Vicenza, Italy, towards Brazil. In a context of massive emigration from Italy, 20 years after the end of the Italian Unification process, through which the different States that were part of the Italian Peninsula were united. Famine, poverty and the search for new opportunities generated one of the most important waves of migration in recent centuries: the destinations were varied, but South America, whose countries had mostly achieved their independence from the European colonies, accommodated millions of Italians.
Almost 100 years later, in 1991, Jorginho was born in Imbituba, in the State of Santa Catarina, in Brazil. A century after his great-great-grandfather from Santa Caterina, the man was born in Santa Catarina. His mother, María Tereza Freitas, an amateur soccer player in Brazil, was the one who instilled in him his love for the sport., in addition to training and advising him. “Normally, you inherit these kinds of things from your father, but my father was bad at football. He saved, but he wasn’t good on the court. “My mother was talented, but my father helped me in other things,” he said in an interview with the Daily Mail British back in 2021. “He made a lot of sacrifices: trying to get me on a team in Brazil, taking me to tests that didn’t always go well. “My mother was the one who took me to the beach to train when I was very young and she was tough when she made mistakes,” he added in that note.
Thanks to his talent and the sacrifice of his parents, he reached the youth ranks of the Italian Hellas Verona at the age of 15. After a few years there, he moved to Napoli; Then he went to English Chelsea, where won the Champions League in 2021and from there he went straight to Arsenal, where he currently plays. If European citizenship is added to football that can only be learned on the beaches of Brazil – courtesy of Giacomo Frello -, the result is a European Championship, a Champions League and ellipses, because history is not closed.
Stephan El Shaarawy
In October 1992 he was born in the city of Savona, Italian region of Liguria, Stephan El Shaarawy. Since he was a child, the cameras were on him: at only 16 years old he made his debut for Milan in 2008. In 2014, he shared the cover of a limited edition of the FIFA video game with Lionel Messi. However, his career never took off, although, at 31 years old, he still has time to make history with the Italian National Team.
They call El Shaarawy El Pharaoh. His father, Sabry El Shaarawy, emigrated from Cairo, Egypt, to Genoa, in search of a prosperous life. There he met Lucía, a nurse with whom he ended up starting a family: first Manuel was born and a few years later the youngest, Stephan. In Italy, Sabry finished his career that he had started in the Egyptian capital and graduated as a psychologist.
Although they tempted him from the Egyptian National Team, Stephan El Shaarawy never hesitated: he made the youth team in Italy and at only 19 years old he debuted in the senior team. Due to drops in level and injuries, he missed most of the competitions, staying out of the last Euro Cup, in which his team was crowned champion. Now, the Italian Pharaoh, who is having a good time in Rome, the club where he is going through his third step, will try to show that he was not wrong in choosing Italy over Egypt, the most champion team in the history of the African Cup of Nations. Nations.
Nico Williams
Nicholas Williams Arthur, known as Nico Williams, was born in July 2002 in Pamplona, Navarra, Spain. His brother Iñaki, also a footballer, was born a few years earlier in Bilbao. The story of how his Ghanaian parents came to Europe was once told by Iñaki, in an interview with the British media. Guardian, after refusing to play for Ghana, the country where his parents were born and from which they emigrated to live in Spain. “I didn’t know that they had crossed the desert on foot. I knew that my father had problems with the soles of his feet, but I didn’t know that it was because he had walked barefoot through the sand of the Sahara at 40, 50 degrees,” Iñaki said in that note. after explaining that, when he was 20, his mother had turned off the television and given him details about her personal history.
“They took part in a truck, one of those with the back open, 40 people crammed in, and then they walked for days. People fell, stayed on the road, people were buried. It is dangerous: there are thieves waiting, rapes, suffering They trick some of them. The traffickers charge them and then half say: ‘The trip ends here’. They leave you with nothing: without water, without food. Children, elderly people, women. awaits them, if they will achieve it. My mother said, ‘If I had known, I would have stayed.’ She was pregnant with me, but she didn’t know it“Williams continued in that interview,
When María Arthuer told Iñaki Williams about her story with Felix Williams, Nico was only 12 years old. There was a long way to go to get to where he arrived and he is today: at 21 years old, he already played in a World Cup and is playing in his first European Championship. Beyond the already more than 100 games in the first division of Athletic Bilbao, Nico Williams is fighting another battle in the Spanish League, currently dominated by Vinicius Jr., a black soccer player from Real Madrid who took up the fight against racism on the soccer fields. Just a couple of months ago, the match between Athletic Bilbao and Atlético de Madrid was stopped by racist chants against Nico Williams, who at the end of the match scored the tying goal and celebrated by pointing to his skin.
