Nelson Valdez

Tembetary

Aged 15, Valdez left his home and family to move to Ypané when he joined the Youth Academy of Atlético Tembetary, and eventually made his first-team debut in the Paraguayan División Intermedia in 2000. The second division club were not able to pay him a salary large enough to earn a living and his family were not able to provide funding for him. Valdez confessed the difficulty he faced when leaving his impoverished family and his home to begin playing with the club, for two years he lived under the wooden plank grandstands of the stadium in a stairwell, using a makeshift bed of blankets and cardboard which laid in the stairwell beneath the stand. He never told his parents, who were poor land workers. Valdez stated, "For two years I lived under the grandstands, we were 12 or 13 people and some of them only endured two or three weeks." While living 250 kilometres away from his family, Valdez had no home while playing for Tembetary. He worked night shifts in a sawmill to pay for food and drink. He was a 16-year-old exposed to danger and the Paraguayan climate, boiling hot summers and freezing cold winters, which Valdez described as "hell, frightening and horrible. But if you have nothing, what can they steal? I had nothing to give". Jürgen Born, chairman of the board or management of German Bundesliga club Werder Bremen and who worked for Deutsche Bank in Latin America, stated that he saw a "madman who never stopped running", remembering youth games in Ypané.…

2003–2006

In 2003, Valdez rejected the chance to play for the Germany national under-21 team in favour of Paraguay, having been invited to trial with Germany U21 by coach Jürgen Kohler, he was eventually selected to represent the Paraguay under-20 national team at the 2003 FIFA U-20 World Cup in the United Arab Emirates. Prior to this, Valdez had been unheard of from his under-20 teammates and coach, Rolando Chilavert, brother of José Luís Chilavert, and was selected due to his presence in German football. Valdez did not know the names of any of his teammates from the squad and eventually met them on the airplane. Paraguay's U20 squad had already finished third at the 2003 South American Youth Championship, and eventually qualified for the FIFA U20 World Cup. Valdez was one of three players based outside of Paraguay, alongside Dante López at Israel's Maccabi Haifa and Víctor Hugo Mareco at Italian club Brescia. The squad also featured players such as Édgar Barreto, Julio dos Santos, Ernesto Cristaldo and Erwin Avalos, with several of these players going on to represent Paraguay U23 at the 2004 Summer Olympics. Valdez featured in all three group-stage fixtures against United States, South Korea and Germany, scoring Paraguay's second goal against Germany in their 2–0 victory, which resulted in Paraguay finished in second position of their group with six points. During the competition, Valdez humorously revealed to Paraguayan newspaper ABC that in the fixture against…

In June 2022, SV Werder Bremen announced that Valdez returned to the club as an assistant coach for their reserves squad SV Werder Bremen II. On 25 May 2026, Club Libertad announced that Haedo Valdez was the club’s principle team coach in replacement of Juan Samudio and was presented by Horacio Cartes and Ruben Di Tore.

Growing up, Valdez dreamed of playing for the Albirroja. Valdez and his family lived in poverty in the deprived district of San Joaquín, one of the poorest parts of Paraguay. Valdez confessed that he had an "excellent childhood" and had the joy of being from a loving family. Not owning a football, his skills were developed by playing with an orange or a pair of socks as his family, which included six siblings, could not afford to buy a ball for him. He first began to play club football when he joined local club 1º de Mayo of the San Joaquín district. Before leaving home, Valdez was to convince his mother to let him play football. His father took his side and Valdez eventually managed to go to Asunción to pursue his dream. Valdez stated that before he left to Asunción to join Atlético Tembetary, he endured depression after the death of his 13 year old cousin who was like a brother, and began consuming cane liquor, a whiskey which was 50 cents per liter, and confessing that he was once almost an alcoholic. "I played football during the day and in the evening was drunk". Later, Valdez' father Antonio spoke with him and looked him in the eyes and then he understood perfectly what he had to do.