Chasing the Dream of Football Pro – The Diary of a Teen trying to make it

This week was the first without school and club training, so it was just watching, playing and doing it again everyday.. all 30 hours of it this week. I trained roughly 5 hours by myself today and watched world cup and youtube for another 5, so I feel all worn out, but only have myself to blame as I left 1 third of the weeks training on the last day of the week. Whatever, all this training is making me a better player so it's all worth it. Especially when I see some special celebrations like Landon Donovan scoring against Algeria, or Suarez scoring a nice one against Korea. I dream of scoring goals like they did every day, just seeing the joy on people's faces and the noise and everything.. wow it would just be unbelieveable. I am always playing scenarios in my head like I make my debut as a late substitute for Chelsea against Man United in the champions league semi final and score a stunner from outside the box into the top corner, and then pretend there is a crowd infront of me to celebrate to! 

I don't have much to say on if I improved or not as I am not playing games or anything. But one thing I can say is that I'm improving on my juggling, it's getting alot better these past few weeks because I'm doing it constantly during training with myself. So now I can bounce it on my shoulder, head, chest without the ball getting away from me.

Next Week

I didn't do one hour of the thirty-one this week, which means I have to do 23 next week. Here's the schedule for that:

So since I have more time, I'm going to start posting more articles on some cool things relating to football. Bye. 

It’s officially the end of the season with my club and it’s time for a little reflection.

It’s been around 9-10 months since the season started and also around the same time I started this blog. I never imagined myself going to trials in England, arranging camps, etc when I began the season. It’s crazy how fast time goes, but in the time from changing my attitude, believing, reflecting and seeing that I can make it as a professional. I’ve learnt so much and gained so much experience over the past season, wow.

Anyway, I’m not stopping yet and having a break. With Summer here I’m dedicating at least 180 hours of playing and watching for the next 9 weeks until Summer’s over and school starts again.

Although this week I admit I’ve been a little distracted. Almost every day this week, I’ve hung out with friends, as you would do if you finished school. Hanging out and chilling isn’t what it used to be a few years back, having sleepovers and watching DVD’s. I’ve been constantly surrounded by alcohol, smoking this week and not to mention getting distracted by girls which took my focus off football a little bit. I don’t smoke ever, nor do I drink regularly, simply because of football. I don’t like to go out sometimes because your always pressured and stuff, and when you’re left out from all the fun.. it sucks. But then again, your only a kid once and I don’t want to regret things I didn’t do when I’m older. But that’s a different story.

This Week
I’ve been out with a back injury all from Tuesday – Friday. It forced me to watch football most of the week, which is why my “punishment” of 6 extra hours I was suppose to make up this week didn’t go ahead because I think that’s kind of pointless just watching all the time and not playing in combination. I did 18.5 hours of watching/playing this week, which is 1.5 hours short of what I was suppose to do, so I’m gonna have to do another 4.5 hours next week as I broke the rules. This means I have to be involved with roughly do 31 hours of footie next week. But.. I guess I deserve this.

The comprehension of my game is still improving I feel. It’s been about 6 weeks since the note taking started and now I am starting to understand the tactical side of things. I finally get what all the analysts talk about and stuff. The difficult part is getting it to translate on the pitch.

Next Week
31 hours is alot. That’s a months worth of club training crammed in a week. I only count watching a live game as 1:10 mins because there are so many starts and stops and times where I am not concentrating and stuff.

So.. I’m done with my 2nd last year of school and now I have a whole 9-10 weeks in front of me to improve. A football summer definently. After watching the first few days of the world cup, it just inspires me so much, it’s so exciting everything. I seriously had tears in my eyes at some moments when players would walk out from the tunnel and sing their national anthems, it’s just so inspring because it’s what I dream of all the time.

I was watching an nikefootball interview with Arsene Wenger the other day, and when asked what he looks for in a player he said:
“none of us is perfect…what makes a player go to the top is that he has one quality“.

I have a few strengths  like shooting, dribbiling and speed, but I don’t know what my one single best quality is, I’m gonna think about it and then once I find it, I’ll work on it every day.

Oh and I didn’t receive a call from footballcv which is quite a shame, although they said in a letter that they thought I was good and they would pass my name around to different clubs. They basically gave me an invite to play for the footballcv academy, but that’s a last resort for me because they only help players get into academy’s, it’s not like a proper one. And it’s pretty expensive, 18k pounds a year!

This Week

I just feel as though I have a couple of things that need sorting out with my game, and once they do get sorted out I’ll be so much a better player. I didn’t write down my pros and cons of training this week, but I gotta keep doing that again because it really does give me insight into what’s up and down for each week.

Through watching games this week, I didn’t really find anything new to say because I think I have already learnt a lot of things and I see alot of repitition now, which is good I guess. I think I gotta start looking more on the defensive side and support play because they are really my biggest weaknesses. Things like when to commit to a challenge, when to make a run and things like that are what I need a little help in, so I will look out for that.

Next Week

I missed 2 hours and 10 minutes of training this week, which means I have to make up 3x that next week. 26 hours and 30 minutes