When Alex Sanchez made his La Liga debut for Real Zaragoza in 2009 he became the first player born with one hand to appear in a professional football game.

Growing up as a person with a disability

Honestly I don’t know if some coaches didn’t want to pick me because I was born with one hand because I just tried to enjoy myself on the pitch and I didn’t care about the rest.

I have been playing soccer since I was eight and it has made me really happy because I have enjoyed every single minute of it.

So, football has been really important in my life for that reason. It made me feel like part of society from the beginning.

From the time I was in school I didn’t feel like that I had a problem, I just mostly cared about playing soccer.

Being a role model

When I was in Spain I just wanted to  be known for soccer. But now that I am older I see that it’s really good to be a role model - because it’s important for the kids. 

Especially because I am in Australia it’s special for me. It’s important for other people because I come here as an inspiration and a role model for them.

It’s pretty important for me because I didn’t have someone I could mirror myself on when I was young - there was no role model when I was a kid.

Studying Human Rights

I am already a qualified lawyer. I finished my law degree when I was playing in Spain and right now I plan to complete a PhD in human rights. I am going to finish the PhD in December when I go back to Spain.

What I want to study specifically is human rights in sport. When I finished the law degree one of the teachers asked me if I wanted to do a PhD in that field because I was already a footballer in Spain.

So I said, yes I want to try that. Because I wanted to keep studying after I finished playing soccer. At the time I couldn’t work as a lawyer because I was a professional footballer in Spain.

Human rights in sport is important to me. I’m talking about the situation in Europe, because I don’t know if it’s the same situation in Australia but from my experience footballers don’t have the same treatment like the rest of population.

We were treated differently in different aspects of our lives.  There are a lot of human rights issues where football players don’t have the same rights as the rest of the people.

So for that reason I wanted to do a PhD in that field and I belive that I will really enjoy doing that.

Why I came to Australia

Honestly I didn’t know very much about Australian football before I came here. I knew that some Spanish players had come here before me and that the standard of life was really high here in Australia.

I knew Western Sydney Wanderers striker Oriol Riera because I played with him for Osasuna but I didn’t know much about Australian soccer in terms of the NPL.

But it didn’t matter because I tried to test myself and I wanted to try new things in my life so it wasn’t a problem for me to come to a country that I didn’t know a lot about the football.

The A-League is obviously higher quality than the NPL. But when I was with Sydney Olympic and played against the  Western Sydney Wanderers and the Central Coast I saw that the difference was not too high and I say that honestly.

The A-League has some very good payers but the NPL also has a lot of players that could also play for A-League clubs as well.

In terms of me playing for the A-League, as footballers we are ambitious and we try to play at the highest level of football as we can. But I didn’t expect to do that when I came here to Australia. I just wanted to enjoy myself on the pitch and I wanted to see the country.

It was my privilege to enjoy every day.

In 2018 Sydney Olympic won the NPL Grand Final and League double thanks to 21 goals from Alex Sanchez

One of the reasons I came to Australia was to learn how to speak English.  When I first came here I didn’t speak it very much but I wanted to get better at speaking it because I want to feel like I have integrated into Australian society as well.

I always try to do that when I visit a new place.  I want to know more about the country so, when I made the decision to come here I decided that I want to travel around Australia because it’s pretty important for me to do that.

I didn’t want to come here and stay at home, eating Spanish food. I wanted to get the full experience of what life is in like in Australia so learning the language was very important to me.

Playing for Sydney Olympic

Honestly I found it very interesting about Australian soccer that the backgrounds of many of the NPL clubs were ethnic. 

Playing against teams like Apia who have an Italian background was very intriguing to me because the migrants from Europe helped build and grow soccer here in Australia.

Playing for a Greek club was very good because I was eating a lot of Greek food at dinner and I was also learning more about the Greek culture as well, so it was very good.

And the fans were very passionate, everything about playing for a Greek club was fantastic.