🚨🤍 Yan Diomande letter to his late sister and on making her proud:
"I don’t even think I shed a tear the day they told me that you were gone. I was just in shock.
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."
“It was a few weeks after I made my debut for Leganés. Who makes their debut at 18 against Real Madrid? It was too crazy. It was a dream."
"And then it was a nightmare. Someone kept calling me from back home. I was annoyed. I didn’t understand why they kept calling me.
I picked up, and they didn’t even soften it. You know how it is back home. No emotions. Just……..
“Your sister is gone.”
“What?”
“She died.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Somebody put something in her drink at a party, and she never woke up. She is gone.”
"You were 15."
"15."
"I never got any answers. I don’t know if I want to know why. Maybe it was jealousy. 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."
"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……."
"Ha…. you will think this is funny. When I moved to play at RB Leipzig, I was always late. Well, not late. But I was on time, which in Germany means you’re very late."
"So you already know what I did next. I started arriving 90 minutes early to everything. I was so early all the time that the guys started calling me “The German.”"
"I always have to overdo everything. I have zero chill. You always said that."
"The pitch is the only place that I feel at home anymore. It’s the place where I feel calm, and I can speak to you. I just wish you were still here so I could tell you….. We did it."
"Everything you said came true."
"I’m going to do what you predicted, I swear. Before I even had real boots, you were telling everybody, “My brother is going to be the greatest in the world.”
"I will prove that you were right, or I will die trying... Your brother, Yan."
@PlayersTribune
“Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.”
-Dale Carnegie
The man is going to retire and there will be a significant drop in attention, interest, engagement and support. A once in a lifetime athlete. Sometimes you gotta appreciate something while you still have it. There just won’t be another person on this team that the people and the media can engagement farm anymore. Furthermore, when THAT rivalry ends, football will take an enormous knock. Hate him or love him (Even though most of you just choose to hate for the sake of it) you have to acknowledge that Cristiano Ronaldo gave us real moments, moments we just couldn’t do without. A man you can only trash online and boo in the stadium, but would not have the same energy if he sat next to you in a plane. That’s where you really see how you feel about someone. Enjoy one of the goats while they’re still here. It’s almost over.