Man City star Joao Cancelo opens up on the tragedy of his mother's passing

Joao Cancelo has opened up on the tragic passing of his mother and how he nearly quit football in the aftermath of her death.

Speaking in the Champions League magazine, Champions Journal, Manchester City star Cancelo discussed the values that his parents instilled in him as a child and how they supported his love of football despite having to work multiple jobs. Then, in 2013 when the defender was a teenager at Benfica, his mother, Filomena Cancelo, was killed in a car accident.

It left Cancelo, as well as his father and brother Pedro, devastated and made him consider stepping away from football. However, his love of the game and a need to support his family helped him return to the pitch.

“I come from a humble family. In Portugal there is often no work; my father had to go to Switzerland to earn money to support our family,” Cancelo said, via Man City.

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“I lived with my maternal grandparents, so I rarely saw my mother during the day; at one time she had three different jobs and I would only see her at dinner time. The values they instilled in me, both my mother and my father, are humility, love, dedication and commitment – values I took from them in childhood.

“My mother is the person I admire the most in this world. I apologise to my father – I know he will not take it personally – but my mother is more like me. Her personality is most similar to mine. Only I know what she did for me; the difficulties we both went through, the conversations she had with me when there was no money at home.

"I would tell her that I would try to do everything to give her a better future, so that she would never have to work again. And