Money was tight, his girlfriend was expecting their first child, and Edouard Mendy was getting concerned.
It was 2014 and Mendy — aged 22 at the time — had been without a soccer club for a few months. Realizing unemployment benefit wasn’t going to be enough to provide for his family, he began to look for jobs outside the game he loved.
“I did genuinely have my doubts about whether I would carry on,” Mendy recalled Thursday about the lowest moment of a career.
“I look at it now,” he added, “and say that it’s thanks to those moments that I am where I am today.