Yesterday in Salzburg, and for every match since the start of the European campaign, Yoan Cardinale and his teammates wore the Point rose logo on the back of their shirts. Touched personally by the cause defended by the charity, the Aiglon’s goalkeeper has become their flag-bearer.

Since its creation in 2015, the Point Rose charity has accompanied parents and their children, suffering from serious and incurable illness; to provide support for the families struck by such a tragedy. To ‘add life to their days, when we can’t add days to their life’, as the charity’s motto says, was created by Nathalie Paoli following the death of her nine-year-old daughter Carla-Marie.

When he first heard about the partnership between OGC Nice and Point Rose, Yoan Cardinale immediately felt a connection. He knows all about this type of family drama. When he was a small boy, his little brother, Mathieu, just three years old at the time, was born with a malformation of his stomach. "The doctors weren’t able to diagnose what he had. For them, he was just another patient, whether you had a broken leg or were about to die, they treated everyone the same. My brother almost died two or three times. My brother means everything to me. Everything. He’s my only brother and those memories of him suffering have stayed with me. It hurts each time I think about it," declared Yoan, speaking with emotion to the Nice-Matin newspaper. The goalkeeper was only seven years old at the time.

The painful experience was finally put behind his family with a life-saving operation: "At a club dinner where I was playing, my father met a children’s doctor. He made the right diagnosis immediately. He promised to operate three weeks later and that following Christmas, my brother was eating fois gras with us! He kept his promise. Before that, they had given us treatments that weren’t right for him. When you’re a parent in this situation, you do what you’re told to do. My brother was almost a test guinea pig. Fortunately, he had a lucky star..."

So when it was proposed that he became an ambassador for Point Rose, Yoan Cardinale didn’t hesitate: "It reminded me of my story. I immediately accepted. If I can offer my support and put a smile on a face or two, I will do so with pleasure."

Yoan will be the face of the club’s commitment to this cause, via its matches in the Europa League, and work to create awareness for its noble cause. And he’ll do it with his big heart, both on and off the pitch.

For more information: lepointrose.org

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