Weekly Review 12th – 18th November 2012 [quora! & Why players fail]

Quora is like the new and improved version of yahoo answers and has been around for a few years now. It was part of my business task list that I would answer a few business related questions on Quora so I could promote Startup Video. But I ended up searching for a topic on soccer and saw a question that stuck out to me: “Why do many soccer players not make it to the top level?”. I saw a few answers there which I am completely against. People saying you need to be born with talent, competition too much, etc. It was Saturday afternoon and I took two hours to write an answer with my own story. I expected the answer would be get like 20-30 upvotes because I put alot of thought in it and wanted to make sure it inspired people. I checked my gmail inbox this morning and my jaw dropped. 142 votes and 3000 views! The response and support was overwhelming.

This was fantastic because now I really know that my football story can resonate with other people’s lives and when I do play professionally I can leverage my story to even more people. I don’t expect anything else to come out of this answer. There are alot of well connected people on Quora, but I don’t really think there are many in the sports industry. I hope there’s the off chance of someone sharing it with a top coach or something… but that’s highly unlikely.

On Monday, I  was just casually talking to a guy named Nico from after Zeeburgia training. Nico is 20 years old and he sort of stood out to me as a decent player and a fit guy but not like a brilliant outstanding player and certainly not a player that just played professional football for money. Apparently, he had a contract in Cyprus for a team that was playing in the Europa League. He had his own flat, car and expenses were covered. He could of extended his contract a further two years but decided not too because there was not enough money. He said he could/wants to play in the Middle East where he could earn 200-300,000 euros per year.

Bullshit radar is on high alert. A lot of football guys like to talk up what they’ve done in their careers. What connected with me is when he said he’s training like “5 hours a day” with the majority of that training by himself at Mike Kolf’s football academy. Mike is the head coach of the Zeeburgia first team and apparently he owns a complex with a gym, football pitches, etc. Anyway, Nico says he goes there to train by himself and I suggested I come because I now how boring it is to train on your own and how much more effective it can be with at least one other person. Training with him would also help me out of course! I haven’t followed up yet, but I’m going to give Mike a call and ask if I can go over there.

On Tuesday I went over to Utrecht to train with vv Montfoort. I originally thought they played in the Topklasse, but actually they were relegated and now play in the Hoofdklaase. I trained with the b team and they weren’t too good. The coaches were impressed though and wanted me to go back on Thursday to train with the a selection. After a talk with the coach, he was really honest and recommend I don’t join the club because it would be better to play with teams in Amsterdam. He recommended to me that I should play games! That’s what everyone is saying to me so I really gotta get on that. I’ll be playing a game next Tuesday night with JOS u/23’s because the coaches want to see how I do in a game. No pressure on that, I should rip shit up. They told me on Thursday that they are really satisfied with me. Would have accepted nothing less!

Next Week

15 hours, lets go!