Before my retirement in 2019, I was a striker for Atletico Madrid, a football club in Spain. It was the 2010 World Cup Spain versus the Netherlands and I was starting to get recognized all around the world. I was sitting on one of the benches in the locker room and I was the most nervous I had been in a very long time. As I sat there, I thought that this could be the most important game I might ever play. After thinking about that for a while, my coach came down the stairs and gave us some words of what he thought were encouraging, ¨ We came here to win not to have fun.¨ he said. Then he told us to get up and onto the field; as I looked around, I could see my teammates' faces, nervous and pale.
As we got onto the field I could hear the roaring crowd, there were flashing lights all around blinding me. The smell of the bright green shimmering grass was overwhelming and it reminded me of some of my first football games from when I was a kid. Those days I wasn’t nearly as nervous as I was that night. Sure I had to win the game and all that but then it was mostly about having fun, but the world cup was a lot different. While I was on the field I was overcome by a feeling of pride and a sense of accomplishment just for making it there. I could see every single person smiling and waving their hands in the air, holding signs, and screaming at the top of their lungs. I started to wave at the crowd and they got louder and louder. Some of my teammates started to wave at the fans too. Before I knew it, I felt like my eardrums were about to explode; that's when my teammates started to put their hands down when the other team walked onto the field.
We all huddled together with our coach to hear the game plan one last time before we walked onto the middle of the field. The Netherlands team was starting and I was beginning to feel all nervous and sweaty, but that could have been the immense heat of South Africa. I started to take deep breaths and the sounds of the stadium got muffled. I could hear my heartbeat and it sounded like one of those big drums at the end of an orchestra. I could hear it slowing down and I got calmer. I took a few more deep breaths and the game started. I ran towards the ball and stole it, that guy didn’t even see me coming. I ran towards the goal, took my shot and it slipped right through the goalkeeper's fingers. The crowd threw their hands in the air and started screaming again. Everyone was amazed by what just happened. My whole team looked at me, and that's when we knew that this was going to be a great game.
The next few plays were more or less the same, and we were far ahead of them. My team started to get a little too cocky though because that's when their team started to step up their game. They made shots that went right past us and we didn’t even do anything about it. The crowd still cheered but for a different team and when I looked up at the bleachers I saw so many fans disappointed. It was finally half-time and we were 2 points behind, which is a lot for professional soccer. Our coach was disappointed in us because he knew we could do better and he knew we could win the game easily. So we filled up on water and we headed back out onto the field after the coach stopped yelling at us.
The player I stole the ball from earlier grinned at me when I passed him, not a friendly grin but one of those grins that you give someone to aggravate them. That just made me more determined to win the game even more. When I ran by the guy again I stole the ball from him. Everyone told me to pass the ball to them because I was far away from where I should have been. I ran a little closer to the goal and kicked the ball, it flew over the field and landed right outside the goal. My Coach had us come to the sidelines and told me to never do that again and then told us to get on the field and win. We got out there and my teammate passed the ball to me and I took my shot and it made it in. We continued to make more goals and started playing smarter.
We won the game and the crowd started screaming, my team started jumping on top of each other. Everyone started leaving the stadium after about an hour, so I went to meet up with my coach and told him I was sorry for taking the shot on my own as I did. He told me “It didn't matter as long as you learned from your mistake.” That's one of the reasons that we won the game, our amazing coach would always help us grow as athletes. It was then that I realized, I couldn't have done this without my amazing coach and team.