Birthday boy Licha: from bricklayer to 'Butcher'

The Reds defender, who celebrates his 25th birthday today (Wednesday), reflected on his route to becoming a World Cup winner in the official magazine and admits there was one moment, in particular, when he knew he had to pull out all the stops to make it as a footballer.

Some frank words by his father helped him realise that this was his destiny, as he set out on the path to the top of the game.

"[When I was] about 13, very young, my parents confronted me," he told Inside United, which is on sale now. "My dad was working as a bricklayer at that time. He said that if I wasn’t going to play football, I wasn’t going to make anything of myself, that I should compare football to being a bricklayer.

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