He was only 16 when he noticed her. It was 2019, and Moisés Caicedo was still just another boy from Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas, with no million-dollar transfers or Copa América on the horizon.
Paola Salazar didn’t imagine either that years later she would win a beauty pageant, or that her story would be compared to that of Lionel Messi and Antonela Roccuzzo.
They knew each other from the neighborhood and fell in love without cameras, clauses, or the press. Football changed everything for him: Independiente del Valle, then Brighton, and finally the record-breaking move to Chelsea that made him the talk of half the world.
She never left his side. In 2023, they had their first daughter, and today Moises is a global star, while Paola is still the same girl who chose him before he was anyone.
They call them the Ecuadorian Messis. But the truth is simpler: two teenagers who loved each other and never let go of one another’s hand, not even when the world began to watch.