Álvaro del Bosque

Most of you know that Spain won the World Cup this month and for those who follow soccer, you know that this is a huge deal for Spain.  If you ask Jen she'll tell you how passionate I am about soccer. She is probably glad it is over because I was glued to the TV for a month. The day the World Cup started in South Africa we were in Ukraine getting ready to take the train back to Kiev a few days after we took Sofia out of the orphanage. I was so stressed out because I didn't know until the last minute if I was going to be able to watch the opening match. Mexico was playing South Africa, the host nation. I kept flipping channels hoping I was going to bump into it and 5 minutes before kick off time, it came on and I was in heaven.  Every afternoon in Kiev all I did was watch World Cup soccer until early morning, 3 matches every day, and back at home it didn't end until the last day.  Mexico got eliminated by Argentina on the round of sixteens, so I switched to Spain as my favorite and I was really happy to see them go all the way until they raised the World Cup, raising the Cup is such a huge deal. In soccer world there is nothing like it and not many people get to do that.

This morning I got an email from my oldest brother Sergio, he is married to Elena who is from Spain, so you can imagine how excited they both are. In the email was an article about the son of Spain's Head Coach, Vicente del Bosque, who has Down Syndrome.  I didn't know this about him until today so that made the whole thing extra special, and seeing this picture brought tears to my eyes.



This is a abstract of the original article from El Pais, Madrid's main newspaper:

Of the three sons of Vicente del Bosque, there is one, Alvaro, the middle child, that change his life. Alvaro was born on August 6, 1989, back then, del Bosque was the Head Coach for Castilla. A few days after a test confirmed that Alvarito had Down Syndrome. "At first we cried a lot", I confess that now that I look back I think que gilipollas fuimos, how stupid we were.
For Vicente Del Bosque and his friends, there is no thought: Alvaro is a gift that life conceded him. Yesterday in Monclova, wearing a number 6 jersey of del Bosque and before going into the Palace Alvaro gave a big embrace to his father. Later he was seen joking with Xavi Hernandez, star midfielder, in the champions bus. "My son is happy and radiates happiness. He is mischievous, but he doesn't know evil", del Bosque proudly explains. Del Bosque, convinced that things happen for a reason, remembers that when he use to play for "El Real Madrid", every morning there was a boy with Down Syndrome that use to visit us at the locker room: "I don't remember his name, just that he was a lot of fun and we really liked him, he use to grab my mustache".
They say that Alvaro is a charming young man, but that doesn't take away being critic about his father's soccer decisions, he gets mad when he doesn't play, in his opinion, the right player in a match, and every day he use to tell him that he wanted Daniel Guiza to to make the cut for the World Cup roster, the one that didn't make it and Alvaro was really mad. He took a lot of liking for 2 players during the world cup, Llorente and Javi Martínez, just because he went to a Safari with their families, so he defended them and ask his father to play them.