{"id":33824,"date":"2015-04-20T22:27:13","date_gmt":"2015-04-21T02:27:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=33824"},"modified":"2015-04-20T22:34:29","modified_gmt":"2015-04-21T02:34:29","slug":"a-heartfelt-message","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=33824","title":{"rendered":"A Heartfelt Message"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script height=\"400px\" width=\"600px\" src=\"http:\/\/player.ooyala.com\/iframe.js#pbid=4bfc225f82bf46c48dfb065eda97f74f&#038;ec=Y5MzZtdDoMNJEO2Vr5Y7N2FJM0f5ppT_\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>He may have been <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/AleBedoya17\/status\/589919779420565504\">playfully teased on social media for it<\/a>, but Charlie Davies made no apologies about the message emblazoned on his undershirt, which he revealed shortly after scoring the equalizer on Sunday.<\/p>\n<p>With the ball in the back of the net, Davies ran to the touchline and lifted his jersey to reveal a red shirt that read in white letters \u201cHappy Birthday Nina!!\u201d, a nationally-televised shout-out to his wife. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe\u2019s someone extremely special,\u201d Davis told the media after the match. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t be where I am today if it wasn\u2019t for her, especially when I was really in the dumps and mentally everything was extremely tough, and she\u2019d be the one to pick me up every day.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Davies met his wife while they were undergrads at Boston College, and he has often credited her with helping him get through his long and painstaking recovery from a serious car accident that nearly claimed his life in 2009. They were married in 2012.<\/p>\n<p>And when Davies said that Nina would pick him up every day, he wasn\u2019t just talking about it metaphorically.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI didn\u2019t have a (driver\u2019s) license for the longest time until, really, last year,\u201d Davies said. \u201cShe would be driving me to practice like a school kid ever since I was a professional, really.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The reason why he didn\u2019t receive his license until his late-20s was simply a matter of not having enough time during his teens and early-20s. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cI went to a boarding school, and then I went to Boston College, and I lived in New Hampshire,\u201d Davies said, \u201cso it was difficult, with what free time I had, to get a license because I was usually playing soccer somewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>With his wife taking him where he needed to go while in school, Davies would have to wait longer to get behind the wheel for himself after he signed a contract with Norwegian side Hammarby right out of college. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn Europe, it\u2019s extremely difficult to get a license when you don\u2019t already have one,\u201d Davies said. \u201cSo yeah, I had to wait until last year.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Eventually, push came to shove, and Nina finally told her husband that the time had come for him to get his license.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy wife was like, \u2018You need to go get it now. Enough is enough,  go get your permit and go get your license,\u2019\u201d Davies said, with a laugh.<\/p>\n<p>But Sunday\u2019s goal celebration was no joke for Davies. Rather, it was a heartfelt tribute to the woman who has stood by him through good times and bad times. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe deserves lot of credit,\u201d Davies said, \u201cand I wanted to make this a special birthday for her.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Charlie Davies wasn&#8217;t shy to send a nationally-televised birthday shout out to his wife. (Photo: New England Revolution)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33826,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[3],"tags":[552,891,49,67,888,892],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nesoccertoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/Davies-1.png?fit=599%2C414","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33824"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33824"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33824\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33832,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33824\/revisions\/33832"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/33826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}