A Heartfelt Message
- Updated: April 20, 2015
He may have been playfully teased on social media for it, but Charlie Davies made no apologies about the message emblazoned on his undershirt, which he revealed shortly after scoring the equalizer on Sunday.
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 “Happy Birthday Nina!!”, a nationally-televised shout-out to his wife.
“She’s someone extremely special,” Davis told the media after the match. “I wouldn’t be where I am today if it wasn’t for her, especially when I was really in the dumps and mentally everything was extremely tough, and she’d be the one to pick me up every day.”
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.
And when Davies said that Nina would pick him up every day, he wasn’t just talking about it metaphorically.
“I didn’t have a (driver’s) license for the longest time until, really, last year,” Davies said. “She would be driving me to practice like a school kid ever since I was a professional, really.”
The reason why he didn’t receive his license until his late-20s was simply a matter of not having enough time during his teens and early-20s.
“I went to a boarding school, and then I went to Boston College, and I lived in New Hampshire,” Davies said, “so it was difficult, with what free time I had, to get a license because I was usually playing soccer somewhere.”
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.
“In Europe, it’s extremely difficult to get a license when you don’t already have one,” Davies said. “So yeah, I had to wait until last year.”
Eventually, push came to shove, and Nina finally told her husband that the time had come for him to get his license.
“My wife was like, ‘You need to go get it now. Enough is enough, go get your permit and go get your license,’” Davies said, with a laugh.
But Sunday’s 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.
“She deserves lot of credit,” Davies said, “and I wanted to make this a special birthday for her.”
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