Henrikh Mkhitaryan has quickly become a fan favourite at Manchester United with his extended absence from the first team actually helping him to get over with the fans. The Armenian midfielder has written an emotional article about his dad that will help fan relate to him even more.
Mkhitaryan was one of several headline signing by United in the summer but after a terrible debut against Manchester City he couldn't get into the team. However the former Borussia Dortmund player has wowed fans with performances in the Europa League and EFL cup recently.
Writing an article for The Players Tribune the 26 year old wrote about his father, who died 20 years ago from a brain tumour, and how the former fooballer had inspired the United player:
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"I'd always cry when he would leave for training. Every morning I'd say, 'Dad, take me with you. Please, please take me with you!'
"At that age, I didn't really care about the football yet, I just wanted to be with my father. But he didn't want to be distracted during training by worrying about me running off, so he came up with a clever plan to fool me.
"One morning, I said, 'Dad, take me to training.'
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"He said, 'No, no. There's no training today, Henrikh. I'm going to the supermarket. I'll be right back.'"He escaped to training, and I waited ... and waited.
"He came back home after a few hours. No grocery bags. I lost it. I started crying.
"'You lied to me! You didn't go to the supermarket! You went to play football!'"
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Hamlet retired from football and the family moved back to Armenia from Valence, a French second division team, because of his father's cancer:
"I didn't really understand what was happening. My father had stopped playing football, and he was at home all the time.
"I didn't know it, but my father had a brain tumor. Everything happened very fast. Within a year, he was gone. Because I was so young, I didn't completely understand the concept of death..."Day by day, they started to tell to me what had happened.
"I remember my mother saying, 'Henrikh, he will never be with us. And I thought, Never? Never is such a long time when you are seven years old."
And talking about his dad's untimely death inspiring him to play football the latest darling of Old Trafford said:
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"I would watch them [the tapes] very often to remember him.
"Two, three times a week I would watch his matches, and it would give me a lot of happiness, especially when the camera showed him when he was celebrating a goal or hugging his teammates.
"On those videotapes, my father lived on.
"The year after my father died, I started football training. He was the drive for me, he was my idol. I said to myself, I have to run just like him. I have to shoot just like him."
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The whole article is definitely worth the read!
(Via The Players Tribune)
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