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A footballer (soccer player, for Americans) with a huge tattoo of Jesus is going viral.
The athlete’s name is Pasquale Mazzocchi, a 26-year-old from Naples who now plays with the Salernitana club. He has a “supernatural talent,” and earned his way into Serie A (the top Italian league) with sweat, sacrifice, and willpower.
Mazzocchi loves tattoos. He uses them to highlight the things he’s most attached to in life. He decided to get a huge tattoo across his entire back: he didn’t choose dragons, skulls, or slogans, but a beautiful image of Jesus with a crown of thorns, clearly inspired by the famous image of actor Robert Powell in the lead role of Franco Zeffirelli’s Jesus of Nazareth.
A dream born on the outskirts of Naples
For this footballer, his family is everything, starting with the wife he met in his youth and has never left. Mazzocchi is humble: he has remained the same and every time he goes back to Barra, in the outskirts of Naples, he transforms back into the child who had to leave there at the age of 11 to pursue a dream. The dream came true, bringing joy to himself, his family, his friends, and an entire neighborhood, which today considers him an example.
Faith in the family
“For me, faith is everything,” he told Fan Page (in October 2021). “If you don’t believe in God, you don’t believe in anything. Some people criticize me for that tattoo, but I am a true believer. I am, my family is and my wife is too. I respect everyone, but I expect others to do the same with me”.
The tattoo of a baby on his heart
Mazzocchi doesn’t only have the tattoo of Jesus: the Salernitana footballer also has another very important one—a child tattooed over his heart. He explained to Fan Page:
He’s the friend to whom I dedicated my goal against Empoli. He’s a boy I grew up with in the neighborhood. We were inseparable. Unfortunately, when he was 9 years old meningitis took him away and since then there isn’t a day that I don’t remember him. Today young people often call each other ‘Brother,’ but he really was one for me. And when he died, a part of me went with him. It sounds like a cliche, but I can assure you that it’s not. And if I’ve undertaken this career, I owe it also to him, because I’m sure that, in some way, from up there, he gave me the courage to leave everything and move to Benevento (the city where his career took off, Ed.).
And today we celebrate...