Fede Valverde is enjoying one of the best moments of his career. Captain of both Real Madrid and Uruguay, everything is going his way in 2026. With his wife, Mina Bonino, pregnant with their third child, a new dimension with Arbeloa to unleash chaos in his best year in white… and a confidence that has allowed him to open up completely in an unmissable chat on the podcast Terapia Picante.
I thought: where am I getting myself into? I started to see clothing brands, I took it off quickly so they wouldn’t see that I wasn’t wearing branded clothes
“I was moving everywhere. One of my coaches called me little bird. My father didn’t like it, but he was the only one who didn’t see it. Now I’m the hawk, because I’m a little more aggressive. But I’m still the little bird,” said the Uruguayan about a nickname that is still used today. Then came Madrid, an offer he could not refuse and with which he felt a kind of mismatch already in Castilla. “It was a tremendous embarrassment, it killed me. I thought: ‘I don’t know what I’m doing here.’ When I got to the parking lot I noticed that my Castilla teammates had very good cars and I could barely have a good car and I was already playing in the Primera Division at Penarol. And I started to think: ‘Where am I getting into? I go into the dressing room and I started to see very expensive clothing brands and I didn’t want to take my clothes off or I took my clothes off very quickly so they wouldn’t see me. It was a reality check,” he explains about his sudden immersion in a world of privilege that contrasted with his reality
On the Valdebebas pitch, everything was different. There, the enormous power of his shots has caused more than one scare. “I’ve injured some goalkeepers. I injured Luca Zidane in the shoulder. I wanted to die, I thought they were going to kick me out, I injured Zidane’s son. Some goalkeepers have had injuries from my shots. Shoulder dislocations mostly. I have very skinny legs, I don’t know where I get so much power from,” he says with a laugh
His viral video at 17
A while ago, a video of the Uruguayan went viral during his time at Club Atletico Penarol, when he was about 17 years old. In this video, he is seen just after a match, in a short interview, where his voice is very striking, and social media users began to make jokes and comparisons, commenting that it resembled the voice of Mickey Mouse. “Oh, yes, that was tremendous. I will never forget it, like the three goals,” he said.
We thought it was something to do with adolescence, that it would change, but it never did
“I already had problems with my voice. When I spoke, I had a problem in my throat and I was always advised to have surgery.” The Uruguayan commented that he visited different specialists and they all told him that he had to have surgery, but at that time they could not solve the problem because of economic circumstances: “We were a humble family and we did not have the money for an operation from one day to the next. We thought it was something of adolescence, that it would change, but it never changed. I don’t know when it changed, but it didn’t change there. Now yes, thank God, but at the time I suffered,” he explained.
I lost my mind but I did what I had to do… Sometimes you feel like lifting it
Valverde also acknowledged that the exposure of the video affected him at the time: “After that day I suffered because people do not know what is behind, in the end it is a problem. It’s funny and today I laugh, but at that moment I was a child,” he reflected.”It took me many years not to encourage myself to talk in group topics with people I did not know because I knew I had that limitation. I was very embarrassed because I had that defect.”
Morata’s entrance
However, his game, that mixture of grit and football, sometimes crosses the line of protocol. The image of his tackle on Alvaro Morata during a derby in the Super Cup is etched in the memory of many. It was a necessary foul for the Madrid side, but not so much for the opposition: “It’s not an image for children. But at that moment I felt that I had to play for the team. I knew I was going to be sent off. I just thought that Real Madrid had to win. I’m South American, we’re hot-blooded. There are times when you feel like lifting him up,” he explained without dodging anything.
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