Fede Valverde ends the Ancelotti puzzle: "He's shy, very normal and focused on football"

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In the world of football, being a normal person is often the strange thing.

Settled into luxury homes and vicious circles, some footballers can lose their bearings, forgetting their roots and the purpose of their professional career.

It is not the case of Fede Valverde,

in his identity document.

«Few come out like Fede.

He is a shy, familiar and normal boy, very normal, everything normal that people can imagine », they say about him in

, where he already manages essential man stripes for

.

He is not a rotation guy to replace

when they can't play.

He is a starter with them and vital in the improvement of Madrid in recent weeks.

is the piece of the puzzle that

was missing .

Son of

and raised in a stable environment in

, the capital of Uruguay, Fede made football a leading actor in the Valverde house.

So much so that at the age of three he was already training with a team of six-year-olds and at nine his mother took him to try out for

.

They say that, shy as he was and is, he waited leaning against a tree for the call from his coach while the other teammates insisted on playing.

You know: «

».

Skipping stages with extreme ease in the quarry of one of the biggest clubs in Uruguay did not make him believe more than anyone, but rather reinforced his idea of ​​normality.

He withdrew from friends that did not suit him and maintained the stable, familiar environment in which he had grown up.

, nor when he lifted his first

with 18, nor even when he won the

Cup at just 19. Nothing changed Federico.

«Already when he arrived at the complex of the inferiors of Uruguay

.

Small, skinny... he had a surprising vision of the game for his age », highlighted Tabárez, coach, at the time.

"I never saw a 16-year-old player with his skills," said coach Pablo Bengoechea, a member of Peñarol, at the time.

His first child and Covid, a turning point

He moved with his parents to

, first to

, then to

and then again to the capital, and grew up, "quiet and professional", in the Madridista discipline.

The voices closest to the white dressing room point out the important professionalism of the human group that forms the current Madrid squad, especially when it comes to

and loss of stripes.

And in that Valverde has acted outstanding.

Aware that he has a midfield that has marked an era ahead of him, he has known how to wait without raising his voice until football has given him his time: "He is very focused on football, on preparation and on rest" , they point to their surroundings.

The day before the game against

he disconnected the cell phone, he wasn't there for anyone.

And today against

he will do exactly the same.

Fatherhood is another of the things that has been a turning point in his life and in his career.

His wife,

, gave birth to little

, 'Beni', in

, just before the world stopped.

With his parents back in Montevideo as he formed a family with his partner, the baby and the reflections during confinement, he focused his efforts on family and football even more.

Nothing else has existed for him since.

"He has the prototype of European-level football," Ramiro Martínez, one of his coaches, said in 2016.

Six years later, Valverde is "the prototype of a modern footballer" for Madrid.

Physical, strong, vertical and punchy, but also with the necessary talent to combine, something key in the greats of the continent.

This is how Madrid appreciates it,

.

Against Chelsea, his physical display in defense helped

, and in attack he punished

.

After a season in which Ancelotti has hardly rotated, this bet also reassures the Uruguayan for his future.

He only sees himself in white, like in that dream he had when he was four years old: "Mom, I dreamed that I had a white shirt and the public sang to me," his mother said a couple of years ago.

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