Cavani: Why keeping faith is so important

The Uruguayan, who is missing his country's November World Cup qualifiers due to injury, opened up about his beliefs to Inside United, during a wide-ranging interview with our official magazine, which is available to purchase now.

The latest issue's cover star stresses that faith is not necessarily about religion but it is a key component of his life and has helped him achieve so much success.

"It’s a great point to bring up, talking about faith, because I think when you talk about faith, I don’t think you need to move the conversation directly on to religion," the centre-forward explained. "I believe that when someone mentions faith, it can be applied and can be practised in many other areas of life, in many other aspects of life.

"I think that faith is important for all human beings. Because in many things that we are going to do, we need to have faith. Have faith in our families, have faith in a friend. Have faith in your life partner. In your wife, your girlfriend. Have faith in your team-mates. Or have faith in your work colleagues.

"It doesn’t matter if it’s within football or whatever other discipline. Have faith in God. That there exists an all-powerful being, as they say, that can help you to keep moving forward. I’d say it’s about faith in the general sense. A faith that helps you to turn situations around. That helps on occasions to achieve important goals. That can sometimes help you to withstand sadness. That can help you deal with a difficult situation or problem, of which there can be many. But more especially when there is an illness.

"So when people talk about faith, you don’t necessarily have to channel everything through religion," he added. "But you have to consider that faith needs to be applied and is necessary for many more spheres of life. So that’s how I am, and I experience things and live my life in that way.

"I believe in my friends. I believe in my partner. I believe in my family. I believe in my team-mates. Because after all that, there’s always time to discover when someone wants to deceive you, when someone wants to be insincere, when someone doesn’t want to stick with you and follow you.

"I’ll let life and people in general show me differently, but I will always run my life having faith in the person who is by my side and who stays with me, having faith in God and having faith in myself. Faith in myself that I can succeed and that I can work hard to be a better person and, in my own case, to be a better footballer and sportsperson."

When asked if he had a message for the supporters for the rest of the season, the South American referred back to his early points.

"The message to the fans would be, well, it’s kind of related to what we’ve chatted about today," he said. "We touched on and talked a bit about faith. It would be to have faith in their team and to have faith in their players, who, without a doubt, will be trying hard to perform well and to keep growing and improving, so that the faith that they’ve shown us, we might be able to pay it back with good results, hard work and by winning.

"So I’d just like to send best wishes to all the United fans and it really is a pleasure for me to be here at their club."

Read the interview in full, only in the latest edition of Inside United, the official club magazine.