I'm Retiring

It's official, I'm a flop.

_{Photo by Marten Bjork}

Many years ago, my football journey started with my dad training myself and my brothers right in front of our home during the weekends. His plan has always been for us (or at least one of us) to play football professionally and he had shown us how serious he was by taking us to join some local team in the area.

Now I had the skills, there was no doubt about that. Everyone in my street back in the day knew me as a very skillful player and I'm confident that I was ranked among the top five best players back then but you see, being a skillful player and being an hardworking player are two different things. I was skillful but I wasn't hardworking and professional football isn't a game for a lazy player, so it didn't take long for me to stop attending the local team.

But I still continued my street football and I got so good that I had about five guys under me that I was literally teaching on how to play football. We would schedule a time for training and I would show them some skills. I did that with them for about a year before my family eventually moved out of the area and then I moved to school.

Being an active street footballer, the skills were still there so I took it to school and soon became one of the top players at my hostel, but then covid happened and blah blah blah (I already made a post on how I lost my skills during covid due to lack of practice).

But I had made that post thinking that maybe I still had a little bit of the old spirit in me and if I maybe start to play more frequently, I might ignite the flames and go back to the old me.

Well my hostel had a match against another hostel today and I was asked to go in during the second half (unlike back in the day where I always played the full 90 minutes). It didn't take long for me to appreciate not starting that game because about ten minutes in, I could no longer run neither could I breath properly. I ran out of breathe faster than I've ever ran out of anything in my life.

Trust me when I say it was embarrassing because I tried giving myself some motivation to continue but then I just knew that I couldn't because my body was literally giving up on me, so I went to my coach and politely asked him to sub me out because I knew that it was either I leave now or I will be carried out by an ambulance.

Anyways, I think that settles it. My promising football career is over and I know Pops won't be happy with me about it. And although I'm not giving up on football completely, I think it's best I go learn how to play golf. It has a lot of money in it and requires little to no running, so I think I will be fine.