Legacy: The Autobiography of Tim Cahill. Tim Cahill

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СКАЧАТЬ well-run youth system with Under-12, Under-13, Under-14 teams, all the way up to the reserves and the first team, which competed in the NSL. All the best kids who lived close by me wanted to trial at Olympic. If you lived closer to Marconi, you trialled there. Some youth players who lived in my area felt Marconi was the better club. It was often a matter of heated debate among us kids.

      The first step to becoming part of the Olympic “family” was to get invited to trials. I first made it at age eleven, playing with my brother Sean in the Under-12s. Again, my dad felt I was always ready to play up an age, but it meant I was always the smallest kid on the pitch.

      When you got selected, your parents would get a letter, then you’d go round to the Sydney Olympic clubhouse and collect the tracksuits and your kit. I remember how much pride I felt in that tracksuit: cobalt-blue and white with the Olympic crest. Alongside my replica Manchester United kits, kept immaculate in my bedroom, I now added my own Sydney Olympic kit and tracksuit.

      The training sessions had an air of intense competition. The place was jammed. Dads parked in all different corners of the ground, wherever they could find a spot, and each kid had to bring his own football. From the moment you arrived, fathers would have their kids stretching, kicking the ball against the back wall, practising heading.

      My brother Sean and I were always together, so we’d start straightaway passing the ball back and forth, juggling, heading it. I would keep my tracksuit on as if I was warming up for the big-time professional leagues. I’d do my stretching and warm-ups, and once it was time for training I’d strip off my tracksuit bottoms, then my top, and sprint out as if it was the start of a match. That’s how serious I was at that young age and it was no different for the kids from Greek backgrounds. Sydney Olympic was the pinnacle; it was the highest level of football they could ever envisage playing.

      The key was to impress the coaches. There was never a moment to slack off. Every drill, every touch, every pass, shot and dribble was scrutinized. Sydney Olympic had one youth coach, George Psaroudis, who had a lot of faith in my brother Sean as a goalkeeper. Some people said I’d only made the team because Sean was so good at that position. In fact, I think it was Coach Psaroudis who first said to Sean, “Don’t let fear hold you back,” but my brother took that phrase and made it his own.

      This made every weekend a trial game for me. I was under the microscope. But I found my rhythm, was strong and creative in midfield, and made an impact pretty quickly for my club. People would start saying on the touchline: “Well, done. Young Tim Cahill’s played well.”

      I started scoring a lot of goals for Olympic. If you were a youth player and you made it into the starting eleven of Sydney Olympic, Marconi Stallions or Sydney United, you were on the radar as a top prospect. No guarantees of course, but you could sense you might be on the road to making it as a professional in the NSL.

      One of the best things about being in the Under-12 team was that I got a job being a ball boy for Sydney Olympic first team. There was an incredible atmosphere at every home match. In the stands behind me, the chanting would come in waves. Olympic! Olympic! It would start slow, then grow faster, with clapping in the rhythm to those syllables:

      “Ohhhh-lymmm-pic!”

      When the home team scored, the grounds erupted as if it was a match in Europe. Throughout the match, I’d fetch balls for the first-team players for throw-ins and corner kicks, sprinting up and down the touchline, thinking, One day I’m going to play for Olympic, in the first team, and maybe if I’m lucky I’ll score boatloads of goals for them.

      It was an incredibly family-friendly atmosphere. Tons of kids in the stands with their parents. During the matches you could buy authentic Greek food like souvlakis and gyros. You could get bags of peanuts or pumpkin seeds—in fact, this brilliant little guy named Andrea—everyone called him “Mr Olympic”—would shout out the words in Greek, and the ground would be littered everywhere with discarded shells. Another guy sold DVDs of Olympic matches but also of the big clubs back home in the Greek national league.

      Being the half-Samoan, half-English kid, I didn’t have a natural niche, didn’t fit into the typical ethnic divisions, but being part of Olympic, it didn’t matter; I soon became known as an “adopted Greek”. The fans and the parents of the other kids in the youth squads all talked to me in a mixture of Greek and their heavily accented English, and it got to the point that I understood some of it and could even get by with a few phrases.

      Australian football has changed a lot since then. The A-League is the only thing many younger fans know today, but, for me, the old NSL was my highest aspiration. My dream was to make it into the starting eleven of Olympic and have those Greek fans waving blue and white flags and screaming when I’d score.

      But even though you’re wearing the Olympic colours and crest as a youth player, it’s still a massive dream—a huge long shot—that you’re ever going to play for the starting eleven in the Olympic men’s squad.

      I played with some top players at Sydney Olympic—really exceptionally talented young guys. There were players who never fulfilled the potential of that talent because of the various paths they chose. Some got a serious injury. Some met a girl and had a kid. Or the needs of family called on them to step up and work full time rather than pursuing their dream of football. And then there were those who had the talent and the drive but lacked some other advantage—they often didn’t have that one good role model in their life who believed in them.

      Others, however, just didn’t have the discipline. They chose going out, having a party lifestyle, rather than the regimen of daily training. It’s a hard truth: reaching the pinnacle of anything requires not only talent, and good fortune, but also a single-mindedness towards those things you can control—if you’re disciplined enough.

      It’s nearly impossible to have this combination of advantages and personal qualities, but today I tell the kids in the youth football academies I run in Australia that what matters, if you really want it, is that you devote yourself to those things you can influence. Give yourself over to your passion. Take every opportunity presented to you.

      At Olympic I came up through the ranks, part of a tremendous youth system, much like the system used by Barcelona or Manchester United to develop the talent of the youngest schoolboys in their academies. I was fortunate enough to have great opportunities—and I took them.

       LESSONS FROM SAMOA

      WHEN I WAS FOURTEEN I made a trip back to Samoa that turned out to be one of the best—and most complicated—experiences of my young life.

      I’d been to Samoa at a young age; we’d go there long enough to get a taste for the culture and lifestyle and, most importantly, our family heritage. It was crucial in helping us kids understand where we’d come from.

      Then, sadly, my grandmother became very ill. At the same time, I’d been called up to play for Samoa as a youth international. Both Sean and I were selected for an Under-20 tournament team, Sean, of course, as the goalkeeper. I was picked as a midfielder though I was still six years under the cut-off age and doubted I’d see much playing time.

      I vividly remember the family discussing it over the kitchen table. Football, was in fact, secondary: the biggest thing for Sean and me was going to seeing my grandmother—we could make certain she was being cared for by the local doctors and my Samoan family.

      We’re from a tiny village in Samoa called Tufuiopa, right on the water. It’s the village where all my maternal family were born and raised. We had a small family house situated on a bit СКАЧАТЬ