The 31-year-old spoke to Stewart Gardner as part of our ‘My Inspiration’ series, in which the Reds can pay tribute to the people and professionals who have played a role in their success to date.
As you can read in the Q&A below, Mata owes a lot to his supportive family and in particular his father, who was a professional player himself. Juan also pays tribute to his heroes of the game, dropping a list of names that all brought joy to so many people’s lives…
Firstly, Juan, what inspired you to first play football?
“It has to be my dad.