Theo Hernandez and Lucas Hernandez are the two brothers who will compete together in the World Cup in Qatar within the French national team. The siblings are focused on this only for now. But, media reports claim that their estranged father has been back in the picture now.
According to what is reported by France Football, the breaking moment of the whole story is 2004 when Jean-François Hernandez, a former footballer of Toulouse, Marseille, Rayo Vallecano and Atletico Madrid , abandons his family and flees to Thailand. Lucas is 8 years old, Theo, 7. At first there are those who speak of problems with the Spanish tax authorities, a version however not confirmed by the Spanish authorities. The man disappears from the radar, only a few close friends have sporadic contact with him. The journalists of the French newspaper went to South-East Asia to look for him: they told them that he was a nice man who dedicated himself to agriculture and fishing for a few years. Speaking in the past, because in 2019, just before the pandemic, Hernandez senior also returned to France to be close to his elderly mother.
Why did Jean-François leave without explaining why? "Because he loves and respects his children, more than his own life, said his former partner Sonia Moldes, "He would like to meet them and talk to them, not because they are now famous footballers. He are not interested in their money. He wants to look them in the face and tell them the truth". Which truth? Laurence Pi has repeatedly publicly recounted the abandonment of her ex-husband, referring to two children left alone to sleep initially in a hotel room. According to what was collected by France Football, however, the brothers' mother would have denied their father to see them. In every way: giving appointments that were then missed, promising meetings that never took place, asking for money in exchange for a few hours in the company of their children and then putting lawyers in the way.
The witnesses of this sad story, members of the Hernandez family and close people, describe a man destroyed by the pain of not being able to see his children and fled to the other side of the world. "Jean-François never abandoned his children, it was she who separated them from him", Saliba cut short. (Bruno Saliba , cousin of the Hernandezes). "My father has been defamed for a long time," Said Lauris Hernandez with confidence (Lauris Hernandez is daughter of Jean-François Hernandez from Sonia Moldes), one of the few people to have kept in contact with his father all these years. "He watches France matches alone, because he cries from start to finish. It's difficult for him. I know that he secretly hopes that his children will call him, he loves them dearly and is suffering. He dreams of hugging them again". Finally, Moldes reports that Hernandez senior, "desperate, went to Thailand. "I know he tried several times to talk to Lucas and Theo, but their mother refused. This is the truth they must know, Jean-François loves them more than his own life."
Now there is the World Cup in Qatar, then who knows, as relayed by La Repubblica.
