Samuel Eto\u2019o<\/strong><\/p>\n He grew up sharing a bed with six of his siblings. His passion for football saw him make balls out of plastic materials he found and played with two of his brothers who are also footballers now. After years of playing for an academy in Cameroon, he moved to France but had to leave to Spain where he joined the youth team of Real Madrid.<\/p>\n At the time, he earned about $200 a week, an amount that completely blew his family away. That was beginning of the fattening of Eto\u2019o\u2019s bank account. Today he is one of the continent\u2019s richest footballers.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Christian Atsu<\/strong><\/p>\n The Ghanaian international\u2019s move from an ordinary little boy on the streets of Accra to being one of the country\u2019s respected soccer players is incredible.<\/p>\n He said growing up in Accra for him was tough as his family had \u201cvery little money and very little food\u201d.<\/p>\n He had to resort to selling sachet water to earn some extra money to support his family. Today his is valued at $12m.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Yaya Toure<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cAnd when there are seven in your family and you say you want to buy a pair your father wants to kill you.\u201d But in the Manchester City midfielder\u2019s own words: \u201cI just had a normal African childhood. Life was a struggle when I was growing up.\u201d Toure clearly took his opportunities as they came.<\/p>\n He used his distinguished youth career at ASEC Mimosas as a springboard to Europe with Belgian outfit Beveren \u2013 from where he has gone on to ply his trade in Ukraine, Greece, France, Spain and England. He has among his numerous awards the BBC African Footballer of the Year.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Steven Pienaar<\/strong><\/p>\n Pienaar has recalled being banned by his mother from sitting on the couch to watch television, as she feared a stray bullet would come flying through the window and harm her son \u2013 so he was restricted to sitting on the floor.<\/p>\n The Bournemouth man has also recalled despicable instances of racism he faced because of the color of his skin \u2013 and the joy he felt when apartheid was lifted at long last in 1994. While Pienaar was able to escape the dangers of Westbury via football, many others weren\u2019t \u2013 soon after joining Ajax, a close friend of his was tragically lost to the mayhem of Westbury, an event Pienaar says is too painful to speak about at length.<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n By: Jonas Nyabor\/citifmonline.com\/Ghana<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The story of people rising from poverty into riches is one that has always been fascinating to learn about. Most often, the story is told of persons in other businesses but not much is said about those in football. Indeed it is quite difficult getting that huge break in football and suddenly getting rich from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[142],"tags":[1009,3,7529,7530],"class_list":["post-323324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-football","tag-christian-atsu","tag-ghana-news","tag-poor-footbalers","tag-poor-footballers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=323324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323324\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=323324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=323324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=323324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"samuel-etoo\"](\"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/Samuel-Etoo-300x169.jpg\")
Now 36 years old and worth about $80m, the Cameroonian star grew up in a very under very difficult conditions living with this family in a small home located in Doualla.<\/p>\n![\"Generated](\"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/Atsu-300x203.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Yaya](\"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/Yaya-Tour-008-300x180.jpg\")
It wasn\u2019t until the age of 10 that Yaya Toure had his very own football boots, having spent years knocking a ball about without shoes in the streets of his native Cote d\u2019Ivoire. \u201cBoots were very expensive,\u201d Toure told The Guardian in 2011.<\/p>\n![\"steven-pienaar\"](\"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/Steven-Pienaar-300x176.jpg\")
Growing up in apartheid-era South Africa was a dangerous proposition for Steven Pienaar, who has described native Westbury \u2013 on the fringes of Johannesburg \u2013 as a cauldron of violence and strife.<\/p>\n