Now he's a two-time CL winner! Bundesliga club once snubbed €80m star

He was already dreaming of his big breakthrough in the Bundesliga, but it would end in humiliation. The collapsed move to Borussia Mönchengladbach was one of the bitterest moments of Willian Pacho‘s career. As the now-PSG star reveals in an article for ‘The Players’ Tribune’, that one canceled deal pushed him to the brink of despair. But it also laid the foundation for his rise to becoming a world-class defender and two-time CL winner.

When Borussia Mönchengladbach came calling for Willian Pacho in 2021, the defender could hardly believe his luck. At the time, he was playing for Independiente del Valle in Ecuador‘s top division. Hardly anyone around him believed football could become something more. “It’s just a hobby. How are you going to support your family with football?” his mother had once told him before he moved into a boarding school at 15.

That made the joy all the greater when the call from Germany came. “To be honest, I didn’t even know where that was. I only knew it was the Bundesliga, and I said: ‘I’m ready. When does the flight leave?'” he recalls. The transfer seemed certain, but shortly afterward came the devastating news. The deal fell through because of Gladbach’s financial problems.

For the defender, it was humiliating to return, because he had already said goodbye with a big party and his club had long since signed a replacement. “When I returned to training, some of my teammates even laughed at me and said, ‘Ahhh, here comes the Bundesliga star,'” Pacho remembers.

As if that were not enough, the next setback followed immediately. In the second game after his unwanted return, he dislocated both shoulders and had to undergo surgery. Pacho had hit rock bottom, both physically and mentally.

All the more incredible, then, that Royal Antwerp got in touch with him. “They actually bought me before I could even train again. I will always be so grateful to them. They gave a broken man a chance,” Pacho says, looking back. Despite loneliness and homesickness, he fought his way through. His motto at the time: “You can’t let this depression win. Do it for Mamá. She wouldn’t want to see you cry.”

After that period of isolation, he managed to establish himself in the starting lineup. In his very first season, he celebrated the Belgian league title with the club. It was the club’s first in 66 years. Via Eintracht Frankfurt, he eventually moved to Paris Saint-Germain for €40 million, where he has now won two CL titles.

But his mother did not live to witness any of those successes. Years earlier, shortly before his very first professional match in Ecuador, she had died of cancer. Pacho learned of it right after the final whistle in the dressing room: “I screamed in pain like I had never screamed before. I had never felt so alone,” he recalls. But through her death, he also felt a change: “I lost all my fears on the football pitch.” From then on, instead of playing with fear, Pacho played with hunger and took his game to a new level.

While the defender, now valued at 80 million, is in action with PSG tonight in the Super Cup against Aston Villa, Gladbach will surely be regretting the collapsed deal. Because instead of the Foals, Bundesliga rivals Frankfurt cashed in, and for Pacho there was a sporting happy ending after all. Even if it came by a roundabout route.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇩🇪 here.