“Winning Goal” is the story of the grand unforeseen hero in the European Football Championship 2016.

Ederzito António Macedo Lopes, better known as Eder, born in Guinea-Bissau, Africa on the 22nd of December 1987 was already a hero before scoring that crucial goal on the 109th minute of the European Championship Final. A hero of resilience, faith in God and belief in himself.

He immigrated to Portugal with his parents at the age of 3. Unable to take care of him due to financial constraints, he was raised in an orphanage on the outskirts of Coimbra. Missing his parents, dealing with insecurities and anxiety, playing football was his outlet, helping him to release these emotions and becoming a stronger person.

Noticeably skillful, he was taken by a teacher to one of the city's small amateur clubs where he excelled up to the point they didn’t want to let him go to the historic club Académica Coimbra. Discouraged and unable to change club, he did not play or train properly for a whole year.

He got the opportunity to compete again in another small club where he earned his first salary of € 400 per month which he used to help his mother and buy his first football boots from Nike.

In 2008, at the age of 21, he finally made it to Academica Coimbra where he spent 4 seasons. From there he transferred to S.C. Braga in 2012 where he blossomed scoring 13 goals in 18 matches, earning his first selection to the Portugal national team in the 2014 World Cup. Hampered by several injuries, three surgeries and a poor tournament performance it was one of the worst moments of his career.

Subject to harsh criticism by supporters and media, he lost his self-belief and found himself in one of the hardest moments of his life. Once again, he had to face all these emotions by himself and find the strength to get back on his feet.

In 2015 he was transferred to Swansea City A.F.C. His Premier League debut didn't go as well as expected and for this reason he went on loan to Lille OSC . Scoring six goals in 13 games in France, was decisive for the call-up to represent Portugal during the UEFA Euro 2016. His draft was absolutely controversial and received a lot of criticism from fans and journalists.

Despite having played 29 games for the Portugal national team, he had scored only 4 goals.

That moment in Paris was his stage for immortality.

Those unrepeatable seconds: receiving the ball and turning towards the goal, he waited just another second, regaining balance and pushing the defender away who kept pressuring him. Then the ball went off, sharp, fast, steered at the narrow space between the goalkeeper´s glove and the right goal post, straight at the heart of the French team.

Outsider through several misfortunes, destroyer of several previous moral victories with the most thrilling of all victories and most iconoclastic of all goals. From breaking windows of the orphanage, the immigrant boy began to break the barriers that previously seemed insuperable to the Portuguese team. The goal that will count for all the others that he did not score, the winning goal that would forever immortalize him and assure his place in the history of World Football, indisputably the most important goal in the history of the Portuguese national team.

It was football that saved him. And it was him that saved Portuguese football on the European Championship final in 2016.