5 LIFE LESSONS I HAVE LEARNT AS A FOOTBALL FAN

I love football. I don’t just like it; I love it. It’s ironic that I would say this but football has taught me some important and core life lessons I never knew that I would learn from her. These lessons are so ingrained in me, they've become the pillars upon which I build my life. Football has given me one of my greatest joys in life, and some of my greatest pains too. Yet, I can’t stop loving it.

?

I wasn’t always a fan, but my love and passion for football was birthed when the men’s football team of my dear nation Nigeria’s under-23 category won the gold medal at the Olympics in 1996.

It was one of the greatest days of our lives, it’s not just the fact that we won the Olympics gold medal, but that we beat the best teams in the world to win it. Our team deservedly beat nations like Argentina, Brazil and won the gold medal.

That day, at midnight/morning there was a great shout of joy and gladness all over the nation. It was a loud celebration. And we were all proud to be called Nigerians. We celebrated as One nation, one people. I’ll cherish this memory in my heart forever. From that moment, I fell in love with this great sport called football.

Over two decades and counting I have continued to love and follow this great game.

I have cried; I have wept; I have celebrated great victories of my teams, and I have also experienced great losses too. There’s nothing as exciting, intoxicating, and painful as loving and following this sport.

It has been an amazing experience for me, and I’ll always love it.

The best times of my life: I mean the times when I am having the greatest fun in my life; are when I’m talking, discussing, and analyzing football. By the way, I’m a Chelsea FC fan, and I’m passionate about her. I love the English premiership, and I believe that it’s the most interesting and the most competitive league in the world.

I’ve learnt a great deal from this sport, I have experienced life through football. I learnt fundamental, and core life lessons from following and watching football, and here are a few of them.

?Take Your Chances

The first and most important lesson that I learned in football as I grew is that you should strive to always take your chances. You must ensure, you must be prepared to always take your chances when it comes your way. You must be ready to hit the goal, hit the target. You don’t have to score a beautiful goal or a world-class goal. You just put the ball at the back of the net. Make sure it enters the net. A goal is a goal.

I learned this lesson in 2004. During Euro 2004, which was hosted by Portugal. Croatia and France were playing, and Croatia was playing better, and creating chances, but their players, were selfish, and they wanted to score the goal that not only won the match, but it must be a great goal, and they kept missing. I think France needed a draw to go through, and they were trailing, and then they brought in their super sub, David Trezeguet, and the young man came in and scored the goal that took France through to the next round, and Croatia was eliminated from the competition.

Someone who epitomized this lesson for me was Ronaldo, the Brazilian phenomenon. He has scored several great goals during the period of his amazing career, but that’s not the first thing on his mind. He only wants to put the ball in the net. The ball must enter the net. He does everything to ensure that first, it’s a goal. Before he now worries if it’s a beautiful goal, or not.

It doesn’t matter how good or how well you play, if you don’t take your chances, you will lose the game of life. Score first, celebrate later.

Play For The Team

The team comes first. The team is first, and you are second.

Football, as in life, is a team sport. There’s a reason it’s different from the game of Tennis. Tennis is more of an individual sport, and so one man plays, makes all the decisions, takes all the risks, enjoys all the rewards, and bears the consequences of all of his decisions and actions.

Football is not like that. Football is different, Football is more about the team than the individual. A football team comprises the players, coaches, doctors, the rest of the members of the backroom staff, and so on. Many people make up the team. For the team to excel and flourish, everyone, every member of the team must play their part, and they must do it well.

In football, individuality is swallowed up in the team. You know you are not more important than the team. The team is more important than you, and everything you do, you must do in the team's interest, and not yours. You are a part of the team; the team is not a part of you.

Your responsibility is to put the team first and do all you can: do your best to make sure that the team progresses. The team’s needs, goals, and ambition is more important than your needs. You see footballers who when the team needs to score and win the match; put themselves first, they put their ambitions first above the teams and the team suffers because of their selfishness and irresponsibility.

A perfect example was in the 2009/2010 season, Chelsea FC and Manchester United were fighting for the league title. Wayne Rooney and Didier Drogba were also contesting for the golden boot award. In the last match of the season, Chelsea needed to win the match to secure the title.

We were leading by one goal, and we needed to score a second goal to ensure victory.

suddenly, Chelsea won a penalty and Drogba went for the ball, He is not the team's penalty taker, Frank Lampard was, and he’s had a great record of scoring penalties. So Lampard and the rest of the team prevailed on Drogba to allow Frank Lampard to take the penalty, and he agreed. Lampard took the penalty and scored.

Fortunately for Didier Drogba, who scored a hat trick in the game. Chelsea won the premier league title and Didier Drogba won the golden boot award, as the highest goal scorer in the league that season.

And anyone who knows anything about Didier Drogba knows he is a massive team player. He always comes through for the team every single time, especially in the big games, and moments too.

Life is a team sport. You are to play for the team. It is easier to go through life’s challenges and excel when you do it together as a team. That’s why you are born into a family unit. You go to school and you have classmates, you grow up with your peers. That’s why there’s a place for a father and mother, coaches and mentors, friends and family in your life.

God did not design you to go through life alone and on your own. To win in life, you must learn to play your own part in the team, the family unit, or the organization where you find yourself.

We succeed together. When the team wins, we win.

Nothing Replaces Hard-work.

?

It’s good to know that nothing in this world can replace hard work.

Above all else, football has taught me the importance of hard work. Every year, you see players full of talent, but they lack strong work ethics, and they don’t develop as well as they should. I have also seen average players with great work ethics excel in this sport.

A lot of dynamic and talented young players never make it past academy football, because of the lack of a strong work ethic. You can’t eat your cake and have it.

If you want it hard enough, then you must work hard enough for it.

What's hard work?

Another name for hard work is consistency.

Doing the same things repeatedly. Hard work is boring work, but that’s what brings the result, the more you do something, the better at it you’ll become— till you become great at it.

It’s said of Frank Lampard, that after the normal training sessions, he would continue practicing for hours. He keeps practicing his shooting and improving his technique. He kept on doing the same thing again and again, and again until the rest of the senior players had to join him and continue training, long after the training sessions were over.

The rise of Cristiano Ronaldo has been nothing short of spectacular. This was a young man who came to Manchester United at the young age of 17. In his native Portugal, they already had a great player in the person of Luis Figo: he is a legend—and in Manchester United, there was another legend, David Beckham, whom he was coming to replace. Yet he was humble and determined to be amongst the best. Focused and single-minded, he worked so hard. He was one of the first persons to resume training, and the last to leave the training pitch- hours after the training sessions were over, he kept at this for years; he was careful with what he ate, because he knew that his body is his greatest asset, and it needed a lot of care for it to, do consistently the things he wants it to do without breaking down.

Eventually, he archived and smashed his goals. Today, he is not only the best, but one of the greatest footballers that has ever played the sport. Clearly, he and his friendly rival Lionel Messi are the greatest to play this game.

Nothing beats hard work.

Not Enough Time

In football, as well as in life, time is of the essence. Your greatest asset is time, and your greatest liability is time as well. You watch a game where a team is winning and in the last few minutes, things change so much that they leave you speechless. The 2013/2014 Champions League final between Real Madrid, and Atlético Madrid is a perfect example. Athletico Marid scored early in the game, and they lead the match until the 95th minute, in what you would say was the last kick of the game, a conner-kick, and Sergio Ramos rose the highest and headed home the equalizer in the 95th minute. Real Madrid won the match 4 -1 after extra time.

Know that you will never have enough time to do or achieve the things that you need to do. So, there’s no room for procrastination. No room to push the things that need to be done today until tomorrow. Things can change so rapidly, that they could leave you stranded and without hope because you refused to do what needed to be done on time.

Early on I talked about taking your chances.

Everything you do should be to prepare to take your chance. Seize it—use it when it comes; because you can’t always control a lot of things. So, you need always to be ready.

Anything that needs to be done today must be done today, not tomorrow. Anything that needs to be done now, must be done now, not in the next five minutes.

Time is of the essence.

You won’t always have time on your side. Make time your best friend, and not your enemy; because time can be a terrible foe.

Looking at the length of most footballers' careers, you’ll find it’s relatively short. They train and prepare for most of their young life, only to play at least ten years at the highest level; which most cannot accomplish. To go beyond ten years, they must have been very careful, and meticulous in the way they used their bodies and with what they eat too.

Some, because of no fault of theirs, cannot last long because of constant injuries, personal family, or mental issues, and so on.

You Need Favour

In Football, as in Life, it’s not about how hard you worked, how smart, or brilliant you are that will guarantee you a great and successful life. It’s great to be focused, disciplined, have a strong work ethic, be a team player, and so on. You can have these, and still fail, on not reaching half of where you should get to in life and in success. Above all else, you need a lot of favor.

Yes, I said it. You need a lot of favor.

Some call it luck, some call it grace or favor. But the most important thing is that to succeed in football, and in life, you need lots of it.

You see it a lot in games. A team is playing so well, creating chances, and yet they are missing it. Chelseas’ Champions League run of 2012 is a great example. In the semi-finals against Barcelona, they played everything they could play, and yet; they were still missing all their chances, the only time that Chelsea attacked, we scored. Both home and away. In the finals against Bayern Munich, they played from the first minute to the final minute, and they even had a penalty, yet they couldn’t score. When they eventually scored, it wasn’t long Chelsea equalized through our only attack in the entire game. They had a penalty and missed it until Chelsea won the game during the penalty shootout.

The last Champions League season of 2021/2022 with Real Madrid is another example of the difference in favour can make in a team’s, and an individual's life.

The presence or absence of favour in your life can make, or mare your life, and career. And we have it in different degrees.

Favour sets you apart from the rest of the people who are as smart, focused, and as hard-working as you. Every great footballer, or person in life has enjoyed favour in different measures, or degrees.

I am going to use a couple of footballers as examples. You have Marco van Basten: an amazing footballer, one of the greatest strikers that the world of football ever truly enjoyed, because of a terrible injury, he had to retire early from the beautiful game.

One can only imagine what could have been.

Fernando Torres, is another amazing, skillful, and graced striker; one of the best Spanish players to grace the premier league. He came down with an injury, and he became a ghost of his former self. Yet he won important trophies with a great club. He practically completed football, and he retired well.

There’s Cristiano Ronaldo also, who by sheer hard work, and focus, has grown to become one of the greatest in the game's history, He won it all bar the world cup. He won five Balon Dior and has been an exceeding great success.

And finally the greatest of them all Lionel Messi, whose been a phenomenon. He played for one of the greatest teams in the history of modern football, won it all, has seven Balon Diors, has scored more goals than every other striker, and has more assists than any other midfielder, or playmaker.

Two good times, he didn’t deserve the Balon Dior, but he won it.

Why?

Favour!

For the longest time, I was a critic—being a die-hard fan of Cristiano Ronaldo, but I had to agree and admit to myself personally that he is the greatest of all times, why because he has enjoyed great mercy and favour in his career. He’s won it all.

For, I believe he is not as hardworking and focused as Ronaldo, but he has enjoyed more favour than him. Ronaldo is a beast of a footballer, a goal machine. Both can be comfortably called the Goats (the greatest of all times), but Messi still has the edge, because he enjoyed more grace.

In life, you cannot fight against someone who has received favour or grace, you just have to love him and celebrate his gifts. These two are great gifts to our generation, and we are privileged to have seen them play this beautiful game.

So, above all things you do, seek and hope to be favoured.