Being a professional footballer is really the best job in the world.
I was living the dream, so having to be forced out of the game was a real kick in the gut. It was time to wake up, but I do miss a lot about being a professional.
I miss playing competitive matches and feeling the nerves before the game, the emotional roller coaster of basking in the joy of victory and enduring the despair of defeat, having trouble sleeping after games because of the adrenaline and of course, the bond you have with your teammates.
What I do NOT miss, is training. It’s funny that as a football player, you spend almost 80% of your time on the training pitch and hate every second of it. I’m sure there are good coaches out there who make training a joy to be part of. You hear of Jose Mourinho’s one hour daily sessions which are quick and intense but get the best out of the players. I have yet to experience that.
The minimum you’d spend on a training pitch in Singapore is two hours, with coaches running you to the ground as they fear for their jobs and will not stop training sessions until they get what they want.
It must also be the Singaporean mentality of getting their money’s worth as S.League clubs do not own the stadiums and have to rent them from the Singapore Sports Council with bookings usually done from 5-7pm.
Morning trainings are the worst! With the session usually starting at 8.30am, I would have to drag myself out of bed at 7am, hit the shower and leave my house by 7.30am ready for a bus ride filled with students and people heading to work, just so I can reach the stadium by 8am.
Notice no mention of breakfast, and probably less than six hours of sleep before preparing for training in the sweltering heat. “Do you think Wayne Rooney trains at 8.30 in the morning?” was the question I always ask myself around the point I reach the stadium.
It’s pretty well documented how S.League players do not get paid as well as they should be and some clubs do not offer win bonuses due to budgetary constraints/stinginess, so coaches will give players a day off instead of money as an incentive for victory in matches.
Maybe even two days if it’s a big win. The downside to this, however, is on your return to training; you just knew that the coach would set up some fitness drills due to the missed days enjoying our rewards!
One day, right after a big victory in the league, a group of players, myself included, negotiated the amount of off days we deserved to the coach as we felt we should have gotten more than what he was offering. In the end, he relented and we got our two days off.
I’m sure every player will say the best part of training is at the very start of the session where the players start playing a possession-based game known as “Monkey”, probably down to the fact that two players have to try get the ball as eight players surrounding them keep the ball from them.
Of course “Monkey” would evolve with higher stakes. At various clubs I played with, if those guys in the middle failed to intercept the ball after 15 passes three times in a row, everyone would be treated to pizza after training as punishment.
The kit man would be on the phone ordering the pizza, which would be delivered to the stadium just in time for the end of training.
At my last club, we ordered eight boxes of pizza but realized that only seven boxes were present. At the corner of my eye, I saw the head coach sneaking away with a box of pizza for himself. He probably needed it more than us after running us to the ground after two hours of training.