Luis Díaz, 29, a Colombian winger for Bayern Munich, grew up in Barrancas, La Guajira, in an environment where hunger was not an expression, it was a routine. In an interview with his club’s official media, he said that as a child he had barely one or two euros a day, and that many times not even that was enough to eat.
Around him, insecurity was part of the landscape: robberies and muggings happened every few days, and violence set the pace of the neighborhood. His father, Luis Manuel ‘Mane’ Díaz, was the one who got him into soccer from a young age, training him at the Cruz Valle Fútbol Club school and teaching him not to let go of the ball no matter what happened.
When he made his professional debut, he weighed only 58 kilos, with barely any muscle mass. From there he went on to play for Junior de Barranquilla, FC Porto, Liverpool, and today he wears the Bayern Munich shirt and Colombia’s in the 2026 World Cup. The same person who had nothing for lunch now decides matches in the Bundesliga. That is how great the distance can be between a starting point and a destination when someone decides not to give up.