Hector Herrera is the heart and soul of the Mexican midfield and great things are expected of him at this World Cup, but it could have easily have turned out otherwise.
Just four years ago, Herrera was scrambling around in the lower reaches of the Mexican league on pitiful wages.
His wife was pregnant and thought her young husband should abandon his dream of a successful football career.
"I wasn't earning anything and obviously I knew there were gynecologist's fees to pay. It was a difficult time," Herrera said in a video interview last year with Mexican sports newspaper Record.
"We talked about it a lot and she told me I should stop playing and we should start working, and I said to her: 'No, wait!, I know we can do better if I'm playing than if I stop and we both start working."
He was right.
Shortly afterwards Herrera got his big break when Mexican first division side Pachuca, who had farmed him out to a modest team in the drug-plagued state of Tamaulipas, took him back.
With his assured, intelligent performances in the middle of the park, he made an instant impact and within months won a call-up for the qualifiers for the 2012 Olympic Games.
At the youth tournament in Toulon, France, that year, national team coaches voted him the most valuable player of the event, and just a few weeks later Herrera won gold with Mexico at the London Olympics.
It was that triumph that brought him to the attention of Porto, who signed him for $10.5 million, a record for a Mexican player. He comes to Brazil after a solid first season in Europe.
Although he was brought up on Mexican football, his idol comes from the banks of the River Plate.
"I've always liked the way that Juan Roman Riquelme plays," Herrera told Record, referring to the Argentina and Boca Juniors creative midfielder.
On Tuesday, Herrera will assume the Riquelme role, just behind the strikers, spreading the ball around the pitch, in Mexico's Group A clash with hosts Brazil at Fortaleza's Castelao arena.
That would scare many players but not 24-year-old Herrera, part of the team that beat Brazil in the 2012 Olympic final.
"We're thinking big," he told reporters in the Brazilian city of Natal this week. "We've already beaten them once and we know that we can take them on again."