After he found no place in Argentina and decided cross the Cordillera with just 13 years to try their luck in Chile, His good performance at Audax Italiano made powerful people from Europe like Real Madrid turn their eyes on him. Franco Di Santo was only 17 years old when Chelsea spent about $ 7,000,000 to take him away …
Being a pubescent, with high school age and without knowing how to speak any English, the Mendoza striker reached one of the biggest in the Premier to rub shoulders with world soccer superstars. “There I understood that phrase of the humility of the great”, Di Santo stated, on the 9th of Dabove in San Lorenzo, in a extensive interview that he gave to Olé.
-In England Drogba took you in the car, was that right?
-Yes, I couldn’t believe it. I was at a birthday, heh. With how little he spoke English, bah, he didn’t really speak anything, he said: “I Playstation You. Now car ”, heh. He was laughing, but he understood me, heh. And to this day we continue talking, yesterday (on Thursday) I wrote to him because it was his birthday. The truth, and I always say it: I had the privilege of knowing him as a person and if as a player he is huge, as a person he has no name… He is from another world, he has a big heart like Africa. I do not think you will find a person who speaks ill of Drogba, he is a great guy, he is always trying to help others no matter who he is. For me it was incredible, he would pick me up, we would wait for him with my mom and dad looking out the window. Drogba was coming to get me! And every day with a different car, heh.
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-In that Chelsea you played you were all figures, did they know you when you arrived? Did you know it was Mendoza or Argentina?
-Drogba and Anelka usually played upstairs, afterwards we rotated Shevchenko, Pizarro, who helped me a lot because he spoke Spanish and to this day we continue talking, Kalou and I. It was five and a half beasts, because I was there, heh. Then there were Lampard, Essien, Makélélé, Terry, Deco, Carvalho, Bosingwa, Ashley Cole, Ivanovicć, Malouda… And no, what were they going to know me! “Where do you come from? From Audax Italiano? Ah, Italy ”. No, Chile brother, heh. But in that club and with that type of people I understood the phrase that of the humility of the greats. I got there and it was one more. They were all national team players, the best from their countries, when they were summoned, we were left alone in the dressing room, heh.
