LifeBogger presents the Full Story of a German Football Legend who is best known by the nickname; “Super Mario“. Sharing the same nickname as Mario Balotelli.
Our Mario Gomez Childhood Story, including his Untold Biography, brings you a complete account of notable events from his childhood time to date.
The analysis involves his life story before fame, family life and many OFF-Pitch facts (little known) about him.
Yes, everyone knows about his aerial threats and finishing abilities, which are similar to that of Mario Mandzukic and Wout Weghorst.
However, only a handful few fans know much about Mario Gomez’s Bio, which is quite interesting. Now, without further ado, let’s Begin.
Mario Gomez Childhood Story -Early Life and Family Background:
For Biography starters, Mario Gómez García was born on the 10th day of July 1985 in Riedlingen, Germany.
Gomez is of German-Spanish descent; he was born to his mother, Christel Roth (a German) and his father, José “Pepe” Gómez García (a Spanish from Albuñán, Granada).
This, by implication, means Mario has dual citizenship with allegiance given to Germany.
Mario Gomez was brought up in nearby Unlingen, an Upper Swabian village in the state of Baden-Württemberg in southwestern Germany, about 100 km south of Stuttgart and 175 km west of Munich.
Mario Gomez Childhood Biography – First Encounter with Football:
Mario once told a story about his very first encounter with football. In his words…
I was four years old and I didn’t really know what I was doing. All I knew was that I had the ball at my feet and I wanted to score a goal. So I started dribbling up the field and all my team-mates began to yell my name; “Mario! Mario! Mario!”…
I took the ball further up the field. They kept yelling“Marioooooooooo!”…I asked myself,…What’s wrong with them? Why do they want me to pass? None of the defenders wanted to take me on. I had a clear path to the goal.
At some point, my parents started yelling my name “Mario!… You’re going the wrong way! Mario, nooooo!” I didn’t understand that there was a right way to go. I just saw a goal, and I wanted to kick the ball into it. Unfortunately, I scored an own goal.”
After learning how to score goals the right way, everyone kid wanted to be on Mario’s team because he was the one who always won.
Every day when he came home from school, Mario will throw his backpack in the corner and call to his mother.
“Mom, I’ll be out to play football.” “Wait, wait, wait!”
She’d say.
“You need to eat something. You need to finish your homework first.”
Christel Roth, after granting her son permission, would then shut the back door to make little Mario confine himself to the garden. Most of the time, his little cousin would join him.
Mario at the garden would end up giving the ball Hundreds and hundreds of kicks with his left foot and then with his right. This has always been his tool, even when he was young, to be able to play with both feet.
Inside the house, his parents had to listen to the racket of the ball hitting the garage door. Bang! Bang! Bang!.
They never told me to stop, nor did they ever put pressure on him to become a professional footballer.
Mario’s parents just saw the happiness the football gave their son. So whenever there was a shattered flowerpot or broken glass, his dad would come outside with a look of disappointment on his face.
José Gómez García would react;
“C’mon, Mario,”
He’d say.
“What are you aiming there for? You can shoot better than that.”
Mario’s father would never take the ball away as he loved football as well.
He couldn’t have cared less about the plants or broken glass, and sometimes he’d even come out and shoot around with his son, except if it was 6 pm on a Sunday.
Then, there was only one place he’d be, in front of the television, watching the weekly football highlights programme.
Origin of Motivation:
During his childhood, Mario Gomez didn’t like watching football on TV. Watching football on TV was always so boring to him.
Why sit in front of the screen, when you could go outside and play the game for real?
Asked Mario. Back then, he would tell his dad;…
“Papi, let’s go outside!”
He’d say, tugging on his arm.
“Let’s play!”
One evening when Mario was about seven or eight, he felt he had finally had enough. Instead of persuading his dad to join him in his favourite garden, Mario sat down right next to him while he watched TV. His father, Jose AKA Pepe said…
“I want you to see this, Mario. Just watch.”
Mario replied…
“Nooooo! I woun’t stay long because It’s boring.”
Mario Gomez responded to his father’s request while he still sat down to watch as his dad wanted him to do. Again, his father pointed at the television,
“Look! There! Right now!”
When Mario looked up, there was an Eintracht Frankfurt player on the screen.
This player dribbled the ball around the other team’s goalkeeper, then around a defender, and then around another defender – just toying with them – until he chipped it easily into the goal.
“Woahhhhhh,” Mario said. “What did he just do?”.
“See?” Mario’s father, Jose, said. “That’s Jay-Jay Okocha. And there’s no one else like him.”
From that moment, Mario Gomez dreamt of playing like Jay-Jay Okocha, who became his first idol.
Post Inspiration:
And after seeing that dribble and goal by Jay-Jay Okocha, Mario kept on watching the highlights with my father, Jose, every Sunday. It didn’t take long before he started watching matches with him as well. In his words…
“We’d mostly watch Spain’s La Liga in our house, and there was no match more important than the match – El Clasico.
Whenever Real Madrid and Barcelona faced off, all my uncles and cousins would come to our home.
Raul jerseys filled our living room, as well as the sounds of screaming and chanting for 90 minutes straight.”
His family were all Real Madrid fans, but when it came to football, nobody could tell Mario what to do. So he decided to root for Barcelona.
Part of his decision was to make himself different from others. Again, it was also because he loved watching the Brazilian players Ronaldinho, Rivaldo and his all-time favourite, Romario.
His love for Romario was because the name sounded like his [Mario]. His support for Brazilian players and FC Barcelona was the reason why he wore a Brazilian jersey, as seen in his childhood photo below.
Jay-Jay Okocha‘s dribble masterpiece and goal against Oliver Kahn, indeed, ignited Mario Gomez’s interest to start a career in football.
Mario Gomez, despite Idolizing Okocha, had to choose a player who reflects his on-field garden football personality to idolize. In his words…
I wanted to be Romario. But as I got older, I realised that the type of striker that I wanted to be wasn’t exactly the type of striker that I could be. I was bigger and stronger than all the boys i had played with, so I became more of a true number nine on the pitch.
Mario continued…
Some boys had a talent for dribbling, but I had a talent for scoring. Whether it was with my left foot, my right foot, or my head, it’s just what I was good at. But unlike other boys, I never actually thought I could play professionally. It just sort of … happened. Step by step. I got better and played for the next best team, then the next one, then the next one…”
Mario Gomez Biography – Maturing in Football:
And then, one year, when Mario Gomez was about 13, Stuttgart approached him and his father and asked the dad if Mario would join the club.
Without a doubt, going to a top academy would be the dream of many young footballers.
Unfortunately, Mario declined the request by the big club reasons because he wanted to stay close to home with his friends and family.
Mario just felt the time wasn’t right for him to leave. Another reason for wanting to remain behind was that he wanted to finish his schooling in his hometown.
A few years later, after Mario’s local team lost to Stuttgart 7–0, the Stuttgart manager walked up to him once more – this time, with a smile on his face saying;
“Even now, we can’t convince you to come?”
Sadly, as pictured below, Mario realised he needed to progress in his career.
He finally joined Stuttgart, which is a stronger club that provided him with more opportunities. This time, Mario was ready to play on another level. Mario, while he was there, had a little more free time.
He had the chance to live in his own flat, to really learn to take care of himself- not just as a footballer, but also as a happy young man pictured below.
Mario soon learned what it meant to be a man on the pitch as well. After doing well with the youth team, he got brought up in Stuttgart’s second team and then, eventually, to its senior team.
His coach, Giovanni Trapattoni, was a hard guy who always wanted Mario to do a lot of training and running.
One day, Giovanni came up to Mario and told him that he was going to play in their Champions League match against Chelsea. Mario was only 18 years old at that time.
For 10 minutes, he got to share the field with Frank Lampard. My first touch was against Marcel Desailly.
“Unbelievable!” he said in his thought while playing with the legend. I’m not a kid anymore…” said Mario.
Mario Gomez Biography – Rising to Fame:
Despite facing Chelsea, Mario still felt he had a long way to go. He knew there’s a lot that goes into making a striker.
One fateful day, Giovanni, his coach, asked Mario to come by his office after practice. Mario had no idea what he wanted to see him about.
“Listen, Mario,”
Giovanni said,
“I’ve been watching you for a few weeks now and I’m really impressed, but I think we can work on some things. And if we can fix those other things, then you’ll be the next striker for the German national team.”
And from that day on, after each training session, Mario would stay late with Giovanni and a couple of the other younger players just to work on those things they had spoken about.
With Giovanni, Mario felt like a professional footballer. Sadly, the vibrant coach left Stuttgart after only a few months but made a lasting impression on Mario.
In the final weeks of that season and into the next, Mario hit his stride — and so did this team. He led his team to win the Bundesliga title.
Stuttgart won the Bundesliga, and Mario got called up to the German national team, just like Giovanni had said he would.
The Miraculous Day:
The day he rose to fame finally came. On a beautiful day, weeks after winning the Bundesliga, Mario received a phone call. In his words…
“I was driving in my car and a number I didn’t recognise showed up on my mobile phone. So I pulled over to the side of the road and answered.
Hello, Mario, the voice said. “I’m a reporter for Kicker magazine, and I wanted to let you know that you’ve been voted the 2007 German Footballer of the Year.”
His prestigious Footballer of the Year award attracted Bayern Munich and the rest, as they say, is how history.
Mario Gomez’s Relationship Life with Silvia Meichel:
Behind every successful German footballer, there is indeed a glamorous wag. While in his youth (age 17), Mario found his childhood love in Silvia Meichel. She helped him to settle in as a youth footballer.
Silvia was his policewoman who ensured Mario felt safe and not alone in his struggle for fame. While fans were waiting for them to get married, the worst happened.
Mario Gómez suddenly ended his nine years of childhood love with Silvia Meichel on a painful date of 2nd October 2012.
Two months later, Gómez revealed another woman. He began dating German model Carina Wanzung in December 2012. Mario Gomez and his girlfriend Carina Wanzung exchanged vows and were joined in matrimony on the 22nd of July, 2016.
Model Carina Wanzung who married footballer Mario Gomez adopted a less is more approach, opting for a simple white slip-style maxi dress with tulle skirt for her wedding.
When compared to Mario’s Ex, Carina has a low rating as WhoDatedWho puts it.
Mario Gomez and his former teammate Bastian Schweinsteiger (husband to Ana Ivanovic) got married in the same month.
Mario Gomez Family Facts:
Gomez comes from a farming family. His paternal grandparents, Pepe Gómez and Torcuata García, emigrated in 1966 from Albuñán, a small town in the north of Granada with just over 500 inhabitants, to reach Germany in search of a better life.
They found a better life in the village of Riedlingen, southwest Germany, in the state of Baden Württemberg. Both couples started working in a nursery.
Along with them, his son Pepe, Mario’s father, who, although Spanish, practically spent all his childhood in Germany. There he met his wife, Cristel Roth, a German, with whom he had Mario.
Since childhood, Mario Gómez has spent summers in Albuñán, Spain, where his grandparents returned after retirement.
José and Torcuata now live in Albuñán, a small town (450 inhabitants) in Granada located on the northern edge of the Sierra Nevada Natural Park, close to the Mediterranian ocean.
Their grandson (Mario Gomez) visits them every summer to get and give a kiss. Despite being Spanish, they support their Grandson’s country of play (Germany).
More recently, Mario bought his parents a farm called ‘Villa Mario’. He also built a house for her parents and another for his sister.
Personal Life:
- His nickname ‘Torero’ is a reference to his other nationality, meaning a bullfighter.
- When he’s not annoying the living daylights out of goalkeepers, he likes to relax with an energetic game of tennis.
- Mario loves the Audi Q7 car, which is worth $60,000.
- Gómez thinks gay players should come out and think “they will play as if they had been released”. He also would like a “radical rethinking” of homosexuality in football. This caused a stir among fans.
- Like many other soccer players, Mario Gómez has also served as a model. He has posed for magazines such as ‘GQ.’
- Arsene Wenger once said about Mario Gomez:
Mario is a strong business finisher. He has long been a versatile striker thanks to his ability to use both legs and both feet, and he has always been attracted by the great teachers of Europe.
- Finally, Mario Gomez is one of the few footballers to have his own website (www.mario-gomez.de). He also has a blog here where he keeps updating match news and views.
Fact Check:
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Hale Hendrix
Hi there! I am Hale Hendrix, a passionate football enthusiast and writer dedicated to uncovering the untold stories of footballers' childhood and biography. With a deep love for the beautiful game, I have spent countless hours researching and interviewing players to bring to light the lesser-known details of their lives.
