If not a footballer, Alireza would have certainly made it big as a gymnast. But then such has been his life of hardships, he has taken up several odd jobs to pursue his dream of becoming a footballer.

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The eldest son of a sheep-herding, nomadic family, in Iran’ Lorestan province, he didn’t remember a permanent dwelling until he was in his teenage years. “We moved from one village to another, rearing our sheep, ensuring they don’t stray from the herd, or from being stolen,” he told Varzesh3.com.

In spare time, he played football and Dal Paran, a game which involved pelting stones into a distance. “It helped me with my distribution later in football,” he would say. The football dream ignited only after his family settled down at Sarabias.

Evading his stern father’s attention, he joined a local club when he was around 12. He was a striker, but one day kept between the sticks when both the regular goalkeepers got injured. But one day, his father found out that he was playing football, leaving the herding to the younger siblings. “I was the eldest, so I had to take on my father’s lineage, but I wanted to be a footballer,” he said. In a fit of rage, his father tore his gloves. And he didn’t have the money to buy another pair.

There was only one solution: board the bus to Teheran at night when his father was asleep. So he borrowed some money from a cousin, and escaped clandestinely. The 600 kilometre journey was arduous, and he had little money. In the bus he met the coach of a local team. His name was Hussein Faiz. He explained his dream, but the coach demanded a token money. “It’s not his fault, it was a club on meagre budget, and it can’t provide free training for everyone,” he reasoned. From the money his relative had given him, he paid the first month’s fee.

In Teheran, he had no relatives or shelter. He trained in the evening and slept in mosques, sometimes on streets. One day, he slept off near the club, and when he woke up he felt coins all over his body. “They had thought I was a beggar! Well, I had a delicious breakfast for the first time in a long while,” he told The Guardian.

Moved, the coach told the club owners to let him train for free and room with a senior player. But still, he had to meet his ends. His roommate introduced him to a car-washing firm. “The owner was delighted because I was tall and I could wash the SUVs without straining,” he said.

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From a car-washer, he became a bearer in a pizza shop. His coach found out and stopped him from going and gave him a stipend., which ran dry by the end of the month. He became a street cleaner by night so that no one would see him. But the nightly shifts took a toll on his body and his game time diminished. But a local powerhouse, Nafta, noticed him and asked him to train with the U-23 side. “My career took off, I started to get money for appearances and got into Iran’s U-23 side,” he told Varzesh3.com.

In 2015, he made his Iran’s debut, just four years after he had escaped his hometown in the dead of the night. Three years later, he would famously save a Cristiano Ronaldo penalty in the 2018 World Cup. In between he returned home and patched up with his father. “He told me that I had made him proud, and that he was sorry that he didn’t support me. It was an emotional moment, but in life, you have to make some tough decisions,” he would say. And on Sunday, he made all the right decisions. And he could spook Belgium’s forwards in their nightmares.