You’ve seen the hair. Everyone has. Those curls bouncing down the left wing are one of the most recognisable sights in world football. And this week a story about them spread everywhere: that Marc Cucurella keeps his hair long so his autistic son can spot him on the pitch.
It’s a beautiful story. But the truth about this father is even more moving than the version going round, and every word of it is real.
What’s actually true about the hair
Let’s be honest about the viral claim first, because Cucurella deserves accuracy, not a nice myth.
He has never actually said he grows his hair for his son to recognise him. The real origin is a childhood tradition. His mother told him and his brother to keep their hair long so that she could pick them out during their youth football matches, and over the years those curls simply became part of who he is. “People see my hair and immediately know it’s me,” he’s said. “If I cut it, it would feel like I’d lost my uniqueness.”
The internet took two true things, the famous hair and his son’s autism, and connected them into one perfect story. It’s easy to see why it spread. But the confirmed reality of what this man carries every day doesn’t need embellishing. It’s already extraordinary.
The moment they knew
Step into his shoes for a second.
You’re a young dad. Your first son, Mateo, is a baby. You put music on at home and watch him flap his little hands, and you smile, because you think he’s dancing. You think he’s just found the rhythm before he could even walk. That’s the memory Cucurella has shared, that innocent early moment, before anyone knew.
Then, slowly, you start to notice other things. Small differences. Things the other children do that your boy doesn’t, and things your boy does that you don’t yet understand. You take him for evaluations. And eventually the word arrives that no parent is ever ready for. Autism. And in that instant, everything you assumed about the road ahead quietly rearranges itself.
Learning it alone
Here’s the part that breaks your heart when you really sit in it.
Cucurella and his partner Claudia Rodríguez have been open about how little help they got. “We saw that some things were different with the other kids,” Claudia recalled. “We didn’t find too much help from the school, and we had our worst months.” A professional footballer, with all the resources in the world, and still the overwhelming feeling after the diagnosis was, in his own words, “not knowing how we could help.”
Nobody hands you a manual. “Nobody teaches you,” Cucurella said. “You have to learn to understand him.” Imagine that. Imagine loving someone that much and having to learn, from scratch, with barely any guidance, how to reach them. Two young parents, teaching themselves how to be exactly what their son needed, because the support simply wasn’t there.
The drives home
Some images stay with you. This one will.
Every morning, the family would take Mateo to school together. Claudia was pregnant with their second child, Río, at the time. Mateo found mainstream school painfully hard. He would come home in tears. Some days he’d only manage a few hours before they had to go and collect him. And after dropping him off, watching him struggle so much to settle, his parents would get back in the car and drive home crying. Every day. “We would go back every day crying,” Claudia said.
That’s the part the hair story doesn’t capture. Not a hairstyle. Two parents, one of them pregnant, sobbing in a car on the school run, because their little boy was hurting and they couldn’t take that hurt away. The helplessness of watching your child struggle and being unable to make it easier, Cucurella has said, has been one of the hardest things he’s ever faced.
When your child comes before your career
And this is where the love becomes something you can measure.
For most elite footballers, a transfer comes down to money, trophies, the size of the club, the level of the challenge. For Cucurella, it comes down to Mateo first. He told El País that before he even considers a move, he checks whether the destination has specialist schools and proper autism therapy for his son. Football is his profession. But his boy’s needs now weigh just as heavily as anything that happens on the pitch, and sometimes heavier.
Think about what that actually means. This is a man at the very peak of the game, a World Cup winner, who has quietly built his entire career around a five-year-old’s wellbeing. Every decision filtered through one question: is this right for Mateo? That’s not a hairstyle. That’s a father rearranging his whole professional life around love.
The good news in all of it: Mateo now enjoys his therapy, those sessions have become part of the family’s daily rhythm, and this year Cucurella lifted the World Cup with his family right there beside him, celebrating on the pitch together.
What we should actually take from this
So no, the hair probably isn’t a secret signal to his son. But here’s what is completely true.
Marc Cucurella found out his baby was autistic when he thought he was watching him dance. He and his partner taught themselves how to understand their son when nobody else would help. They cried on the drive home from school, over and over, because their little boy was struggling. And this World Cup winner now picks his clubs, his cities, his entire career, based on whether his son can get the support he needs.
That’s the real story. It was never really about the hair. It was always about a father who would rearrange the whole world for his child, and quietly has been, this entire time.
What’s the most touching sacrifice you’ve ever seen a parent make for their child?
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