Why Is Soccer Important To Me

To be frank, the world expects far too many things. People strive for something that is outside of their reach because only then can they satisfy the expectations of everyone but themselves. From the very start of our schooling experience, we as individuals are expected to meet someone’s requirements. In kindergarten we are expected to learn the alphabet, understand numbers, and are even pushed to be social and make friends. We are given goals to pursue and accomplish, set by someone other than ourselves. We work hard to accomplish these goals, but for what? For a long period of time in my life, I consistently persevered through several problems that life threw at me -- literally. I have experienced my fair share of soccer ball hits to my head. Soccer is a sport I enjoy playing with my friends and teammates, while competing with unique individuals. However, the sport I’ve grown to love and play has not
I was not looking for some valuable lesson. At first, my ability to play soccer was completely disastrous; I was not able to kick the ball farther than 10 meters, trap the ball, or even run with the ball. I would complain about how practice and games were useless to me when I was not a part of the starting lineup. My coach told me that in order to start I would have to practice and condition almost every day. Practicing every day finally brought me the starting position as a left winger. Yet, I felt that I was merely running up and down the field, passing the ball to the center midfielder, and then running out of breath. I found myself not having the excitement I had dreamed of. On television I would watch my favorite player, Neymar Jr., who also happened to play left winger, smile. I was shocked, why would a professional soccer player in the midst of a tie game smile. Within the next few minutes he nutmegged a defender and shot top right corner bringing his team the