Former Real Madrid player Abner Felipe has revealed that Zinedine Zidane is responsible for his professional football career as it is, after the Frenchman persuading him to stick with the sport.
Abner spent four years at Real Madrid (2014-2018), making it to the Castilla side, before leaving for Estoril. He has since gone on to play for Curitiba, Athletico Paranaense and Agua Santa in his native Brazil too, Farense back in Portugal, and has just joined RWC Molenbeek in Belgium.
The 27-year-old was on the fringes of the first team at that time, but three serious knee injuries in succession hampered his progress. Abner told Marca that the third took him to the brink of an early retirement.
“I was in training and I got injured. At that moment, I already knew that I had seriously injured myself again. Going back to the locker room, I started thinking: ‘I’m going to quit.’ Because I knew how difficult recovery was, how long it took. You would have to go through the whole process again.”
“In addition, it was one after another, there was no time to forget the previous ones. One month after I had just fully returned to the team.”
Yet it was Zidane who talked him down.
“However, he (Zidane) called me into his office, spoke to me and told me that I shouldn’t retire yet, that I was very young and that I had a long road ahead of me. He has a very large percentage of influence in that decision to continue playing football.”
More generally on Zidane, he was full of praise for the former number 5, who is much-beloved at the Bernabeu.
“He is a very calm guy. A phenomenon, very intelligent. I was always a very cheerful guy, regardless of the circumstances, always with positive thinking. So, many times he called me to highlight that, that I always had a smile on my face and he wanted me to continue like this. He is a person who has helped me a lot.”
Last year he was voted the best left back in Portugal’s second tier, and moving up to first division football in the Belgian Jupiler Pro League, Abner will line up alongside Kylian Hazard this season.
