DDaniel Muñoz earned the right-back spot for the Colombian national team through dedication, sacrifice, marking and also his ability to get out. And, in addition, he is the defensive player with the most goals scored in the Lorenzo era.
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But to get there he had to fight hard, to the point that he was close to giving up his idea of being a professional player.
He is 28 years old and, after playing for Águilas Doradas, Atlético Nacional and Genk, he has already reached the Premier League, where he shares a squad with Jefferson Lerma at Crystal Palace. A scenario that, ten years ago, seemed unthinkable.
The day Daniel Muñoz was about to quit football
When he was 18, the footballer born in Amalfi, Antioquia, tired of being rejected by all the teams he had tried out for, decided to stop playing football and go work in the United States in whatever came up to help his family. What was a disappointment at the time ended up giving him a second chance in the sport: he was denied a visa.
An amateur club in Medellín, Total Soccer, finally gave him the opportunity to emerge, even though the motivation was not the same: Many of his teammates in the Antioquia league matches were already professional.
“It wasn’t easy to get to a place and play with kids younger than you and knowing that the other teammates were already professionals. That’s where you have to be humble and I told myself ‘you’re going to be the greatest,’” said Muñoz in a video that went viral on social media and in which he gave his testimony of Christian faith.
The support of Manuela Jiménez, whom he married three years ago but with whom he has been in a relationship for 12 years, was also key.
At the age of 21, he finally made his professional debut with Águilas Doradas, where he played for two years before moving to Atlético Nacional, the club he supports and which he even followed in several cities. There he had to play in many positions, in which he showed his class.
Daniel Munoz
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He left Nacional directly for Europe, to play for Genk, where he was a teammate of Carlos Cuesta and Jhon Lucumí, and where he continued to develop his offensive skills.
He has already scored two goals for the national team, the one that won against Spain in the friendly in March and the one he scored against Paraguay in this cup. “It is a quality that I have always had. I have developed it in the clubs I have been at and I have decided to do it in the national team as well,” he declared to DSports.
Muñoz is going for everything. He wants to win the Cup and thus crown a great moment for the team, with an unbeaten run of 25 games that, for now, only reflects a statistical fact.
“It is something we value, but we should not focus on that. It is better to continue game by game, because the objective is only one: to be champion. It is useless to have 200 victories and not win anything,” he concluded.
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