He never forgot the woman who helped him when he was 12 years old.

Cristiano Ronaldo.AP

Cristiano Ronaldo may currently be one of the greatest footballers who ever lived, but if there is one thing he has always boasted about, it is never forgetting his past despite the success he has achieved. And he always remembers the people who helped him when he needed it most.

One of those people was named Edna, as he revealed in an interview he gave in 2019 to Piers Morgan and which has again come to light. In it, Cristiano recalled how he grew up in poverty in Madeira, Portugal, living in a small house and sharing a room with his siblings.

He had to beg for food at the age of 12

Now that the news is his departure from Manchester United, memories of that interview have surfaced to remind the world who he is and, above all, where he comes from. He recalled that his mother was a cook, while his father was a gardener and an alcoholic.

But the memory that Ronaldo recalls most is that, when he was 12 years old, he left home to go to Sporting Lisbon’s youth academy, a stage that he points out as one of the hardest in his life.

Cristiano and his teammates used to go to the back door of the local McDonald’s to order leftover hamburgers at the end of the night. A woman named Edna and two other employees always helped them.

“Late at night, about 10:30 or 11, we’d get a little hungry. So we had a McDonald’s next to the stadium where we lived and we’d always go to the back door and knock on the door, ‘Hey, do you have any hamburgers left?”‘

He searched Edna for years to thank her

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CR7 thought that by sharing his story, someone would connect him with Edna and the other two girls who helped him. “I want to invite them to Turin or Lisbon to come to my house, to have dinner with me and I want to meet these girls. I want to give something back to them, because that period was a period that I cherish very much. You can’t imagine what it meant to have burgers at night.”

After that interview, Edna Carina Emanuel Caldas appeared, having no idea of the impact her actions had on Ronaldo.

“I’m happy and it shows how humble he is. I’m really nobody for him to remember me like that. It was something that happened a long time ago. I’m very happy for what he has become. I never thought he would remember me so many years later.”

So far it is not known if Edna and Cristiano met again, but knowing him, surely he has wanted to keep private the reunion with that person who was so important in his life. A story worthy of a movie about kindness and gratitude.