Paulo Dybala reveals childhood dream | OneFootball

For many of us, our childhood dream was simply to play professional football.

Paulo Dybala’s childhood dream was a little bit different.

The Argentine told Italian Vanity Fair about his long-held goal of winning the Ballon d’Or and unlike most of us, he actually has a reasonably good chance of achieving it.

“We’d sit around the fire in the summer and I told my friends that [winning the Ballon d’Or] is what I wanted,” he recounted.

“If I win it, it would send out a huge message to many kids; for all of those born like me in small villages far from the great metropolis’ who can hope to be able to tell a similar story to mine one day.”

Despite his grand ambitions, Dybala also recognised that being a top footballer is not always the fairy tale that many of us believe it to be.

“When we have a ball at our feet, we footballers are delighted, but what happens behind the scenes is not always all that pretty,” he explained.

“When you get to the level that I’m at, often you are a very lonely man.

“God gives us this talent, but it’s a talent that you need to work on. I’ve seen so many phenomenal players at youth level – lads who you would say: ‘If only they had their head screwed on, they could have been the next [Diego] Maradona or [Lionel] Messi’.”

Dybala is certainly developing into one of the best players in the world but even he would admit that he has a very long way to go until he could be placed anywhere near the same category as Maradona and Messi.