Legacy: The Autobiography of Tim Cahill. Tim Cahill

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СКАЧАТЬ up and run at him again.

      We moved beyond those years, but Sean’s words always stuck with me. To this day it’s something Sean and I still share—more than an in-joke, it’s a brotherly bond. No matter where I’m playing—in England or New York or Shanghai, or representing the national team in World Cups—I’ll get a text from him, out of the blue, with those same words:

       Don’t let fear hold you back.

      After Balmain Tigers, my next club was Marrickville Red Devils. Marrickville was a community that simply loved football. Every weekend was like a carnival, with the different languages and cultures, the foods, smells and flags of so many diverse nations. Nowhere do you see the melting pot of Australia as clearly as in the faces of the families who are passionate about football.

      I soon made a lot of great friends in Marrickville and, now that I had more technical skills, football actually became fun. I was no longer the frightened four-year-old who had to be shoved onto the pitch. In the ebb and flow of the match, I found my release. I wasn’t afraid to take on other players, dribbling, feinting and using the simple art of the one-two with the other midfielders and forwards.

      Marrickville Red Devils holds a special place in my heart because it was where I scored my first header. I can still see it unfolding vividly in my mind—like a slow-motion movie. We’d won a corner. The ball was whipped in from the right, I timed my jump, keeping my eyes wide open. Three defenders around me flinched and shrugged at the ball. I climbed above them, saw my chance and took it. I headed it, clean on the forehead, directing it exactly where I’d intended—with power—into the goal.

      When the net bulged, when my team-mates swarmed me and cheered, my confidence soared. I remember turning, even as the ball flew past the keeper, to see people on the touchlines—my mum and dad and some of the other adults—already screaming.

      It’s a big deal in a young footballer’s life when he scores his first header. We’d all scored goals with tap-ins or well-timed strikes, but leaping and directing a header with power was a more advanced skill.

      Over the years, it’s become something of a signature for me. Five of the first six goals I scored for the Australian national team came from headers. People have said that I head a ball the way most other players kick it. That’s largely because when I see that cross come in, I’m fearless. Players often head the ball with reservation: they tuck their head in, flinch and squint—you even see this among some professionals. What that means, in effect, is that they’re letting the ball take control. You can see they don’t truly want to head it. With me, it’s the opposite.

      Once I understood how to do it properly, I fell in love with heading. It felt, for some reason, very Samoan. Being fearless, athletic and powerful with your head is not something everyone has the ability to do on the pitch and I soon saw that as an avenue to success.

      Confidence breeds more confidence. There was a natural progression from that moment; I started scoring a lot of headers regularly. My dad’s often said that even as a youth player I probably scored a good fifty or sixty per cent of my goals with my head. Crosses from the wing, free kicks and especially corners—I’d found I had a knack for leaping and getting good contact on the ball with my forehead. Still, at that age, I didn’t have much power in my shot, though I always had excellent timing: catching the ball as it bounced and volleying it over the goalkeeper’s head. We were still all relatively short kids, so lobbing over the net-minder was an effective way to score.

      With the Red Devils, my vision, technique and ability to head the ball made me stand out, despite being a year younger than anyone else in the squad. And the more I scored with my head, the more I would train and train at heading. Some weeks, I spent hours just trying to perfect the angling and generate more power with my contact.

      I see this change in confidence a lot in the youth academies I run in Australia, and it comes down to the basics. You have to take kids through the art of heading slowly, step by step, from square one, because sticking your head in the path of a flying object goes against common sense! To do it well you have to keep your eyes wide open and your mouth shut. You can’t be passive and let the ball hit the crown, but actually have to attack it with your forehead.

      Now I teach my own son Cruz, who’s still only three—just as I’ve taught my sons Kyah and Shae and my daughter Sienna: “Head the ball the way Daddy does. Open your eyes, make clean contact!” I can already see the confidence growing in Cruz. When you breed that self-assuredness in a young kid, it makes it easier for them to do anything. Getting that parental encouragement and the first sense of confidence only snowballs and you inevitably get better.

      I’m a firm believer that kids don’t truly find themselves until they experience that first moment of confidence. For me it came when I scored that first header for Marrickville Red Devils.

      In the midst of all my outdoor team commitments, I started regularly playing indoor soccer, also known as futsal. Playing indoor soccer was important in my technical development because the spaces are tighter, the action quicker, and it requires a player to develop a greater sense of touch and ball control.

      We played for a team called Banshee Knights. Our team identity was Irish but our close-knit group of friends—Ian Frenkel, Filimon Filippou, Vince Hansimikali and Nick Pizzano—were from loads of backgrounds. The name Banshee Knights was my father’s idea. Dad’s of Irish descent and loved those screaming banshees of Celtic legend. We wore the green and white with black shorts.

      We were all talented individuals, and as a team we were fierce. We played in a lot of big competitions. Once we even travelled to Canberra for a tournament, though we lost in the finals to a team led by Nick and Leo Carle, two South American brothers who were also fantastically gifted indoor players. Despite that loss we continued to be known as the underdog team that seemed to do well on big occasions.

      When I’m asked about my mentality as a footballer—what drives me so hard on and off the park—I always say it was seeing my parents get up at the crack of dawn, 5:30 a.m., to go to work. Mum always had two jobs: working at various hotels early in the day, then a second job at Streets Ice Cream factory that she would finish by 6 p.m. My dad got up early, too, to drive her to work—he’d suffered an injury on his job, but he became the best house-dad. He did all the cleaning, cooking, all the running around with the four of us kids—probably one of the hardest jobs in the world.

      My family wasn’t well-off—my brothers, sister and I were never in a position to spend money frivolously with our mates, because that would affect the household budget. I was constantly aware of how hard both my mum and dad worked just to make ends meet.

      Even at a young age I worried about how much my mum pushed herself: how many hours she worked, the lack of sleep, just to make sure we had the necessities like school books and school uniforms—not to mention those extras for football.

      By the time I was ten years old, I fully understood and respected what my parents did to support our passion for the game. I understood how expensive it was for new boots and kit, plus the registration fees for clubs. I knew the sacrifices my parents were making. It wasn’t a hobby, even at that age, to join a club and play in tournaments. Football was a commitment and a major financial sacrifice for my family.

      Often, I heard my mum get up in the morning and, just before she left, I’d hop out of bed and say goodbye to her because I knew I wouldn’t see her until very late that evening. Those memories left a mental scar that has stayed with me for life. Even at four years old I knew that life for my parents was a constant struggle.

      After my indoor football games, we’d drive to a small Greek gyros shop in Marrickville. СКАЧАТЬ