When Real Madrid came calling, among the things Spanish left-back Marc Cucurella wanted to know first was if the club had facilities to accommodate the needs of his autistic son.
He reportedly said yes to the world's biggest club only after he was convinced that Madrid had schools and therapy options for his son Mateo.
Is Cucurella's son autistic?
In August 2025, when Cucurella was with Chelsea FC, the full-back, alongside his partner Claudia Rodriguez, spoke about their journey after Mateo's autism was medically confirmed.
The couple have been together since 2018 and welcomed Mateo, their firstborn, two years later. Within a year, Claudia realised her son was not like other toddlers his age. "We noticed differences compared to other children, but since he was my first baby I wasn't really sure if it was normal. Maybe he would just take longer [to develop] than other kids," Claudia Rodriguez would later reveal to the media.
"He didn't make eye contact, he didn't respond to his name, he was very 'chilled out'. He didn't care what we were doing, he wouldn’t pay attention to you... But based on what I knew about autism back then, I didn't think that was the cause. Because Mateo is super affectionate and it just didn't add up."
Following Cucurella's World Cup glory with Spain, several social media accounts started celebrating the father he is as well. They claimed that Mateo's condition was the reason for the full-back keeping long hair. Cucurella, they suggested, figured out that this would help him stand out on the pitch and make it easy for his son to identify him.
However, Marc has always had longer hair ever since he arrived on the senior scene, as his own old social media posts would show. He had long hair even before Mateo was born.
Why Cucurella has always kept his hair long
The parents decided to consult a doctor when they confirmed their son was also experiencing speech delays. "Put plainly, Mateo has autism. I'm grateful we found out as soon as we did, but I wish I would have realised it much sooner," Claudia would tell the press.
In fact, in 2024, he told the press how his mother asked him to maintain long locks. "My mother let our hair grow so long because she'd get distracted when she took us to play football, and to tell us apart, she recognised us by our hair. We played in the youth teams, and I've kept it ever since," he told Spain's La Voz de Galicia. (The full interview can be read here.)
"I'm cutting it little by little, trimming the ends and styling it myself. I've always had it like this, and now it also suits my personality, my style, and well, we'll keep it like this for now," he added.
