Carrasco: "I don't feel Portuguese and I want to win this Euros"

Carrasco returned to Atletico Madrid after a season in the Chinese league with Dalian Pro from which he left out the back door. After an impressive season and with the trust of Diego Simeone, the winger earned his ticket to the Euros, where he has already shown glimpses of his talent in the group stages of the competition. 

The Belgian international will feature in the last 16 to play a very special match. He will go up against Portugal, his father's nation, doing so in Seville, where his mother was born. However, Carrasco got rid of his father's surrname and made the decision not to play for the Portuguese national team.

"When you're a kid you don't notice that your father isn't there, but that doesn't matter. My mother did the work of both of them. Everything that I am, I owe to her", Carrasco assured. For her part, Carmen, his mother, said she had never asked him for anything when he decided to not put his father's surname on his shirt, saying: "It's the best gift I've ever had".

That being said, Carrasco said that he does retain "the temperament of my Portuguese roots", but he made the decision to play for the Belgian national team after coming through the ranks at Genk. "I don't feel Portuguese. I was made in Genk and I want to win this Euros", the Atleti player insisted.

Regarding the match being played on Sevillian soil, Carrasco feels the match won't be any more special than it already is: "I still have family in Seville, but my close relatives are in Belgium. The match against Portugal is special in itself, but not because of my private life."