For your heart.

Months later, Sporting Lisbon’s scouts offered a lifeline: a spot at their famed academy. Cristiano boarded a plane alone, clutching a tattered ball. In Lisbon, he endured taunts for his rural dialect and skinny frame. Homesick, he called his mother nightly. *“Train harder than everyone,”* she urged. So he did. While others slept, he sprinted hills, lifted weights, and practiced free kicks until midnight. Coaches whispered, *“That kid’s not human.”