Legacy: The Autobiography of Tim Cahill

Legacy: The Autobiography of Tim Cahill Tim Cahill The story of international football star Tim Cahill, one of the most admired Australian sportsmen of all time.Tim Cahill was born in Sydney to a Samoan mother and English father. He grew up in the city's western suburbs playing football with his brothers and for his local club sides. As a teenager, Tim's parents took out a loan so that he could travel to England and chase his dream of becoming a professional soccer player. It was an act of faith repaid with a stellar international career and the legacy of one of the most admired Australian sportsmen of his generation. With his trademark honesty and directness, Tim reflects on what it takes to make it to the top - the sacrifices, the physical cost, the mental stamina, the uncompromising self-belief and self-determination, the ruthlessness, but also the decency, the integrity, and the generosity. An autobiography that is more than a record of the goals and the games, Tim Cahill's story is a universal reminder of the importance of making your moment count. Copyright (#u7aee4e41-b7c0-5049-9061-9c7a109184ea) HarperSport An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 77-85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London W6 8JB www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk) First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2015 FIRST EDITION © Tim Cahill 2015 A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library Front cover image by Adrian Cook Back cover image: The Under-8s Balmain PCYC team in 1986, with Tim at right of the goalkeeper (courtesy Fairfax Syndication/Balmain Police Citizens Youth Club) While every effort has been made to trace the owners of copyright material reproduced herein and secure permissions, the publishers would like to apologise for any omissions and will be pleased to incorporate missing acknowledgements in any future edition of this book. Tim Cahill asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books. Find out about HarperCollins and the environment at www.harpercollins.co.uk/green (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/green) Source ISBN: 978-00-081441-73 Ebook Edition © November 2015 ISBN: 9780008144180 Version: 2015-11-06 In memory ofFaataualofa Tuato Born 3 April 1932, died 27 May 2005 The backbone of our family The strongest person in my life, along with my mother Sisifo Tuato Cahill Taught me everything about my culture, heritage and beliefs And the most important lesson of all: family over everything I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear. Nelson Mandela Contents Cover (#u854167d8-47a2-5c61-a026-e021a18342d0) Title Page (#uf495b723-c6b9-5758-b39d-3500bac618cc) Copyright Foreword by David Moyes Part 01: Beginning the Dream Fearless Reaching Higher Golden Bicycles and Olympic Dreams Lessons from Samoa Beating the Odds Part 02: No One Likes Us, We Don’t Care Sacrifices England The Lion’s Den Samoan Fire Down But Never Out The Cup Run The Call-up Part 03: Once a Blue, Always a Blue Everton Gladiators One City, Two Colours The Boys in Blue Making History All Good Things Rolling Back the Years Part 04: Glory America Brazil and Beyond Green and Gold New Horizons Legacy Acknowledgments Plate Section About the Publisher FOREWORD (#u7aee4e41-b7c0-5049-9061-9c7a109184ea) I’LL NEVER FORGET THE DAY I decided to sign Tim Cahill. Not simply because I was sure I’d spotted a fantastic raw talent. It was quite a day all round. It was 2 May 2002. In my last season in charge of Preston we’d been searching around for players of ability and seen Millwall a couple of times. This energetic, pugnacious Aussie in midfield stood out. My first transfer market as Everton manager was about to open and, having seen Tim about the championship a couple of times, I persuaded chairman Bill Kenwright that we should go together to watch Millwall against Birmingham in the second leg of the play-off semi-final. I mentioned to Bill that we’d be looking at a couple of guys, including Steven Reid, but, privately, my main attention was going to be on this Aussie fella. Bill picked me up in his old Jag and we drove down to the New Den in South London. I’ve seen some atmospheres in my time as a player and coach, but this was fearsome, let me tell you. Tight streets, low bridges, both sets of fans with a reputation for being a bit feisty; in fact, there was horrible rioting and fighting associated with this tie, and as we drove past the supporters in this elegant old motor they were thumping and banging on the roof and the windows. We had to want to be there. Millwall lost 0–1 in the last seconds and thus missed the chance of going to the final in Cardiff. Tim hit the bar with one of what would become his trademark headers with Everton. Immediately after the game, as we drove north, I told Bill that we had to have this guy. What stood out to the naked eye was that he was tremendously effective in both boxes: defensively able and usually the first to head clear, but also with the hunger, ambition and engine to be up in the opposition penalty area quickly afterwards looking to do danger. Right then, he brought to mind a guy I’d always admired—John Wark. John would often outscore the strikers at his club because he had this fantastic ability to time when he arrived in and around the box and the means to finish the physical work he’d put in to get there. I was sure that this Cahill fella was one from that production line. When we finally got him to our offices for a meeting with me and the chairman something else happened. His personality knocked our socks off. Not only was I very impressed by this guy in whom I was about to invest a lot of faith and a lot of hope, but Bill was bowled over too. What oozed out of him was not only resolute self-belief but great character. To this day Tim has the ability to charm people, to make them like him or believe in him. In truth, he’s a very likeable guy who conducts himself well. This won’t surprise you, but I’d mark him down as easily one of the two or three players who most helped me change Everton, one of the best signings I’ve ever made. He’s seen, I think, as a major Premier League footballer, but the fact that he came from the lower leagues to the very top and not only managed to bridge that gap with considerable ease but also help rebuild the fortunes and reputation of a leading Premier club is a terrific testimony to his personal and footballing talents. Beyond his immense character, I’d pinpoint two things about Tim. Obviously the first is his world-class aerial ability. He’s among the best ever. But we’ll come back to that. The other is that he has this great tendency to “appear” when he’s most needed. Big games where a win is vital, a match where things are going against you, a draw turned into a single-goal win—Tim was the fella you’d always count on. Any manager—more importantly, any fan—will tell you that they treasure a player like that. Priceless. We got a pretty quick return on our investment if you look at his first-season performance and his debut goal. That header past David James for an away win at Manchester City, just seconds before Tim was sent off, will live as long in the memory as the day we decided to buy him. Whether he was scoring or not, what was an absolute constant throughout his years for us was that Tim was a real man in training. He trained as hard as he played, and my advice to younger players is to copy that. Train as you mean to play: compete, work, give everything and match day will not only see you perform better but win more. That’s what Tim always gave: 100 per cent, every day. Physically he’d compete with you, mentally he’d look for ways to outsmart other players or find their weak points. Both in training and in matches, he’d leave a bit on you in the challenge if that’s what he felt was important in order to win. He never, ever hid. Saying all that, what I guess most people will talk about is his remarkable leap. We often tried to figure out what were the elements behind it. He’s not got particularly massive thighs or calf muscles, and what we concluded was that it was a mix of innate timing, hunger to win the ball in all situations and the fact that he was very, very lean. With his extremely low body fat, he was light—as well toned as he was muscularly. Mix all that and getting above bigger men to head the ball becomes both feasible and a great art. But I want to add to that perception: it’s one thing to get to the ball, quite another what you do with it. Tim was an absolutely phenomenal header of the ball. Once he got up, he was in a class of his own, whether heading it away from danger or putting it where a keeper couldn’t reach it. Thanks for all those headers, Tim. One other little thing that people often forget is that it takes bravery. You had that in buckets. However, I’ll dare to lift the lid on another side of you. When we completed the medical to sign this promising midfielder from Millwall, it was a massive, massive relief to Tim because of a nasty cruciate ligament injury he’d had about a year previously. Footballers sweat over medicals and deals can break down. So when he got the news that he’d passed with flying colours there were some tears of relief and happiness. I liked that. I saw it as determination and ambition and a need to push upwards to bigger challenges. Raw desire to win exhibits itself in different ways. Tim leaving Everton was a terrible wrench for me. He’d been so much a fundamental part of what we’d constructed at Goodison. But we knew there would be a moment when he needed a change and going to the New York Red Bulls was a great move for him. I wasn’t in the least surprised that he proved himself important there too. I suspect he became really popular in New York, just as he was with Everton fans. In China he’s been scoring frequently since he moved to Shanghai and I think his career will, once again, find another level there. Tim’s international career with Australia was always something of a difficulty for us when he was at Everton. Usually it meant travel to the other side of the world and international games midweek—not ideal for a Premier League star who’s a vital component in a hard-working team. Yet he’d always get himself back in time, by hook or by crook, no matter what the distance, no matter how inconvenient the travel, no matter how severe the jet lag or lack of sleep. He fought like a tiger to make sure he could star for his country and help Everton win. He’s been just immense for Australia, I think. His goal in the 2014 World Cup against the Netherlands was the best in the tournament. Some achievement that! As a football nation Australia has continued to grow in importance and a big part of that has come from Tim and what he’s done for the country. Talent and personality. He and Harry Kewell, in particular, have been the standard bearers. Top European players. His legacy for Everton and for Australia will be that of quality, hunger, achievement and popularity. Of goals, thrills, fun, competitiveness and ambition. That will live on in the memory for a long, long time. Tim joined me on the pitch when I said my own goodbyes at Everton and I was surrounded by some really special players – it was good of him to make that journey for me. I thought it was very fitting. In fact I was grateful and delighted. Vital to me from the beginning, there with me at the end. Thanks for everything, Tim. It’s been emotional. David Moyes September 2015 PART 01 (#u7aee4e41-b7c0-5049-9061-9c7a109184ea) FEARLESS (#u7aee4e41-b7c0-5049-9061-9c7a109184ea) I CAN’T REMEMBER A TIME when I wasn’t dreaming of football. I grew up in Sydney, in a football-loving home. My dad, a Londoner by birth, was fanatical about all things related to the game. From the time I was three or four years old, I didn’t need to play with toys. I was perfectly happy with something round that could be kicked. Funnily enough, during my first competitive football match, I found myself scared out of my wits. We played Under-5s for a team called the Balmain Police Tigers. My brother Sean was five years old. I was four. I remember the match so clearly. I wore an orange kit with black shorts and orange socks. And when I ran out onto the pitch, I immediately started crying. The pitch was muddy, the other kids looked big and intimidating, and I didn’t want to get my kit dirty. But every time I tried to run off, my parents pushed me back from the touchline. The kids on the team laughed at me. All the adults on the touchline did too, thinking it was cute, I suppose. But I wasn’t laughing. Tears kept streaming down my cheeks. Maybe I wasn’t quite ready to play with the older boys, but it was like how a lot of kids learn to swim. You’re thrown in the water, you splash around, then dog-paddle over to the side of the pool—no adult is really going to let you sink—and that’s how you learn the lesson. After that miserable first half, I realized I wasn’t going to be trampled. I touched the ball a few times and got into the flow of the game. I didn’t go after the ball so much as the ball was kicked against me by the other boys. I was too frightened to be making any actual passes, let alone take a shot. But even that cold, muddy ball hitting my thighs and shins taught me something. The fear of what you imagine is often the worst part. With every ball that came to me, I learned I could withstand the impact, the surprising sting of the ball. Touch by touch, I started to get better. As frightening as that first match was, my nervousness faded away—my passion for football began to grow. My mum’s from a small village in Samoa. She grew up on a plantation that raised livestock and grew crops like taro and bananas. It was a simple life, and I don’t think she ever, in her wildest dreams, imagined she’d get married and live one day in a big city like Sydney, let alone have four Australian-born children. My father left England by boat in search of a new life. He ended up stopping off in Samoa, doing some fishing, met my mum, Sissy, fell in love, and then had to steal her off the island before my Samoan grandfather could catch him. My dad and mum went on a massive adventure to Australia—and, from what I always heard as a boy, it was pretty hard times back then. Both worked long hours, crashing at friends’ places, until they could afford to rent their first home. When I speak to my mum, even to this day, I can hear in her voice how tough her life has been. Talk about a risk! She left behind the only world she knew, in that simple but happy village—Tufuiopa, Apia—where her father and grandfather were both chiefs, to start a family in Australia. I have an older sister, Dorothy—we all call her Opa—an older brother, Sean, and then I came along in December 1979. We never had much money or security. We would rent a place for six or eight months, then pack up and move. It seemed like we were always hopping from one new neighbourhood and new bedroom to another, where we’d do it all over again. Constantly moving homes had its difficulties, but the reason was always in the back of my mind—my parents were working hard to put food on the table and make our lives better, whatever it took. I’m sure it was stressful and anxious at times for my mum and dad, but for me there was always an escape: football. My dad always watched the big English league matches, the FA Cups and the European Cups. I can remember it from when I was as young as three years old. Even at that age, I understood the passion for the game, if not all the rules and finer points. West Ham United had been my father’s club and those allegiances never leave you, as I would later see myself in my years playing for Millwall and Everton. My father grew up in Rainham, Essex, where his dad, my grandfather, had played for the Rainham Working Men’s Club. He had been on the verge of getting signed for Colchester when he broke his leg badly, which ended his career. Dad often talked about his being coached by guys like the centre-back Charlie Hurley, from County Cork in Ireland, who ended up playing for Millwall and then had a long career as a top defender at Sunderland. I remember being a tiny kid, waking up at silly hours of the morning because I could hear loud cheering in the lounge room, or could see flickering lights from the hallway—even hear the sound of the football being kicked—and I’d sneak out of my bedroom and not let my dad see me, just hide for the first fifteen minutes, until he’d finally notice and allow me to sit with him and watch the match. Even though I had school the next day, Dad would let me miss sleep to watch all the highlights we could from England. Rarely were West Ham games shown in Australia, but we’d see the biggest clubs, like Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool and Chelsea, in what was then called the First Division (the Premier League didn’t come into existence until 1992 when I was already a teenager). We’d also watch a lot of continental football, especially Italian teams. AC Milan playing Juventus—that was a big Italian league match I remember well. One of the most powerful experiences of my life was seeing that “golden age” Milan team made up of so many gifted players—greats like Marco van Basten, Ruud Gullit, Paolo Maldini. Dad would also let me watch World Cup games into the early hours of the morning. I’d be too excited to sleep. As a kid, I remember dreaming of one day playing professionally. But I realized that was such a long shot. By this point my kid brother Chris had been born and part of my realization was that with the size of our family—three boys and a sister—there was no way my parents would ever be able to meet the costs involved. Even at that age, I somehow understood that making it as a professional footballer wasn’t only about talent. Or even willpower. Maybe it was something Dad had said in passing, but I knew that money was often the biggest obstacle to getting the opportunity to play at the highest levels of the sport. I kept watching big European and English matches on TV with my dad, playing in the back garden, in the hallway with my brothers, even in the tight spaces of the bedroom. Everywhere I walked, I was basically kicking a football. In the bedroom, Sean and I used to kick the ball off the walls. The rule was you got one touch to volley it to the bunk beds. We’d take turns: five shots each from a fair distance. When we’d hear my mum walking down the hallway we’d instantly stop—“Sean and Tim, what are you up to?” My brother would rush to sit at the desk, I’d hop on the bed and pretend to be reading a book, because, like mothers everywhere, she didn’t want us banging a football off the walls or the bedroom furniture. Sharing that time with my older brother was crucial. Despite the age difference, my father always had us placed in the same teams. Sean’s typical of big brothers, but especially of Samoan big brothers. He was always looking after me, protecting me, giving me little pointers and tricks. If some kid on the opposing team came in hard on a challenge and fouled me, well, Sean made sure that kid would never kick me again. Deep down, Sean has the kindest nature, but he could be a tough guy on the pitch—especially when it came to watching out for me. By the time I reached eight or nine years old, my skills had improved a lot. I think that came from always playing in a higher age group. That was my mum and dad’s influence. Survival of the fittest, I suppose. If I was going to be the youngest and smallest boy on the field, forced to hold my own against larger, stronger opponents, my technique and confidence had to improve. I knew early on that I would have to be quicker, learn faster and outsmart the boys I played against. I couldn’t out-jump or out-muscle anyone, but I saw pretty soon that I might be able to out-think them. Never in my entire youth football career did I play in my own age group. Part of it was logistics, too. Our parents were so busy working that Sean and I had to train on the same schedule. We couldn’t go to different pitches, have different pick-up times. It would be a huge inconvenience and cost Mum and Dad more in petrol. We often say in a Samoan family that you’ve got to have a head like a coconut. Playing football or rugby in the back garden, you get more than a few knocks and kicks to the head. It’s just part of growing up. And Samoans are known for being rough and tumble. With us—with all islanders, really—when you have a fight at home, the kid who cries first is the one who gets the parental smack. That’s just the Samoan culture. Boys aren’t coddled much; they’re taught to hold their own, take a few knocks and get on with it. Of course this meant I was always getting the smack, because there was no chance I was ever beating my older brother Sean, let alone some of my Samoan cousins—hulking guys twice my size, some of whom went on to play professional rugby. Sean and I would often get into tussles. We’d stand there toe to toe, he’d be looking down into my eyes, I’d be looking up into his, defiant, and he’d always say, “Don’t let fear hold you back. If you want a shot at the title, I’m here.” He’d say it with a smile, because he knew no matter how angry I got, how much I fought, I could never put him down. “Don’t let fear hold you back, bro!” I’d stare at him with anger, then charge him like a little bull. It was like hitting a brick wall—BOOM!—and I’d pop 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. We’d go there on Thursday night, excited because it was our one treat for the week. I’d order a beef gyros with lettuce, onions and barbecue sauce, and many times my mum wouldn’t order: “No, I’m okay—I don’t want anything.” I’d eat only half, handing the rest to my mum, saying, “Sorry, I’m full.” She’s a very astute woman, but to this day she probably doesn’t know that I understood the reason she didn’t order anything was because, first and foremost, she was always looking out for us. And even now, regardless of how much I’m earning as a footballer, she hasn’t changed. Whenever we go to a restaurant in Australia, my mother will pick the cheapest item on the menu. I’ll smile and say, “Mum, go ahead, order whatever.” But it doesn’t matter—she’s still as economical as she was when I was a kid. REACHING HIGHER (#u7aee4e41-b7c0-5049-9061-9c7a109184ea) THE NEXT LEVEL UP IN my youth career was when I joined Lakemba Soccer Club and was selected to play for Canterbury Reps. Now I’d joined an elite group of boys. One of my best mates, even to this day, Anthony Panzarino, was to become a massive influence on my development. Anthony and I hit it off immediately and were soon inseparable. We played together for both Lakemba and the Reps. Canterbury had more than a dozen club teams; if you’d done well at your club, you’d receive a call up, but only one or two players from each club got the honour. Only a few players from Lakemba were selected. Making it to Canterbury Reps was a pretty big deal; this was no longer football as recreation. If you made the team you’d travel all around Australia. We were ten and eleven years old, the age when we were starting to find ourselves as footballers, and travelling with Canterbury opened the world to us. I remember during our Lakemba and Canterbury Representative days it seemed like we never stopped playing football. If we weren’t in class—or sleeping—we had a ball at our feet. I’d go round to Anthony’s house, kicking the ball with him for an hour before training, shooting and passing against the wall or along the side of his garage. Anthony and I both had long hair down the back of our necks like so many of the great Italian and Latin American players in those days. We were trying to look like Redondo, the brilliant Argentine midfielder; just about everything else we did was an imitation of the big-time professional footballers: the way they walked, their mannerisms we’d seen on the TV, right down to how they wore their kit. At home, Anthony’s dad, Mick Panzarino, always watched Italian league matches. Anthony’s mum, Beatrice, would put out a huge spread of food. His dad would sit at the head of the table and we’d feast on fresh-baked Italian bread, salads, pastas, meatballs and imported mozzarella, while watching those matches from Italy on the TV in the living room. I used to love going to the Panzarinos’, especially after training when we were always ravenous. I’d never tasted better food in my life. Anthony and I didn’t have one single day in the week when we weren’t playing football. Talk about a time commitment: there were loads of driving and logistical arrangements for our parents. During the indoor season our schedules were packed. Lakemba matches on Saturday, Canterbury Reps on Sunday, indoor matches with the Banshee Knights on Thursday afternoon. Add in practices for all those teams and there was really not a single day of the week when I wasn’t either in training or playing a competitive match. Football consumed my entire life, but I didn’t want anything else. I didn’t want to hang out and do what the other kids from school were doing. And, outside of games and practices, Anthony and I would put in hours training on our own at his place. Looking back on it now, it’s obvious we were little machines who were completely in love with the game. By this time in our lives we were getting a reputation as an elite group, and I was lucky to be among such skilled young players. My parents still have a clipping from one of the Sydney papers that referred to us as “the Maradonas of tomorrow”. For a kid my age, at that time, there was no higher compliment. Such a fantastic age, too. We had so much energy, jumping fences, meeting up after school. My mates and I would quickly ring each other after school and go to the park with my brothers Sean and Chris. We’d play three v. three. I remember getting into punch-ups because one team had lost 1–0 or 2–3 or some such foolishness—I mean, we took those kickabouts that seriously. We’d fight over who scored, or who fouled whom. Whether it should be a throw-in or a corner kick—any little thing. Then we’d run home to our own houses. And the next day—it didn’t matter that we’d fought the day before—we’d ring each other up and do it all over again. Those are priceless childhood memories. I could never stand losing at anything. Not with my brothers, not with my mates. Just wasn’t acceptable. Years later, funnily enough, when I was playing for Everton, I’d find myself having a similarly competitive friendship with one of the most gifted footballers of the Premier League, the Spaniard Mikel Arteta. Some days Anthony’s dad would take us to training, other days it would be my dad’s turn. But no matter who was driving there was no small talk: these were serious football lessons. The whole way to training, our dads would talk tactics and strategy: how we were going to play and link up together as midfielders. If it was a game day, the talk would be more motivational—“How badly do you want to win, boys?”—right down to the level of asking us if our boots were clean. It’s those details that show your level of passion, pride and commitment to the sport. When it came to football both our dads knew what they were talking about. With my father, it was bred in the bone: that hard-core working-class Londoner’s love of the game. With Anthony’s father, there was more Italian flair, but he was equally passionate. Anthony and I usually huffed and puffed and muttered under our breath: “Bloody hell, our dads don’t know nothing …” But I can see now how much they did know, and how deeply they affected our lives. I can still hear Anthony’s father’s voice as we’d drive to the Lakemba training sessions. “Anthony, you need to shoot more—you’re taking too long on the ball” or “Anthony, you need to get the ball wide to the wing, so Tim can meet the cross. And you both need to link better together.” Anthony and I formed a solid partnership on the pitch. We both played in midfield. Sometimes I’d play slightly in front of him. We each had our strengths. He had a really powerful shot. I had strong heading ability and vision. Still, I was a long way from a finished article at that age. Some of the other kids had better shots, great touch and control of the ball. At that stage in our lives, I often played with kids who were more polished and technical. I wasn’t discouraged if I saw one of my mates, or one of my brothers, had a better shot, though I’d sometimes shake my head in amazement when he’d strike a precise volley into the back of the net. If anything, my admiration for that skill fuelled my own ambition. It inspired me to improve my own shooting. I’d find myself studying everything my mates did to generate that same power. By the time I was playing with Lakemba and Canterbury Reps, my dad’s expectations for me had grown. He’d always been this way, but, as I got older, he kept raising the bar and the scrutiny got more intense. Back when we lived in Annandale, Dad would take all three of us brothers—Sean, Chris and me—down to the park at the back of Johnson Street for training. These weren’t casual kickabouts: he had us looking like little professionals, running through cones, doing sprints against each other, various triangle passing drills. He’d also make us work hard on our heading. He kept a ball inside a net-bag, hooked to the branch of a tree. Talk about an old-school trick. You rarely see anyone practising headers that way anymore. Each one of us in turn would run as fast as we could, leap up and head the ball, learning how to make good contact and get proper direction. And we’d better get it right, or Dad would make us do it over and over again. Because he always stressed the importance of being two-footed, Dad would sometimes have us take the boot off our stronger-kicking leg—in my case the right—and have us shoot only left-footed. It’s a simple technique but a highly effective one. Dad would also regularly take videos of my matches and then show them to me on the TV at home, focussing not on what I’d done well, but on what I could improve. “Look, Tim, I know you scored three goals but you could have had four.” He used to stress that I needed to develop more power in my legs. He would also tell me that I was arriving in the box too early. He would freeze-frame the video and show me. “Look, here: if you’d held up your run a bit, see how much better positioned you’d be for the open cross?” My dad was an instinctive motivator. He was never one for patting you on the back. No hugs after matches. And I’d never—or very rarely—hear him say, “Well done, son, you were terrific out there today.” Still, I’d occasionally catch him, when I’d scored a nice goal—a well-timed header or difficult volley—and there’d be a momentary flash of pride. A glance that expressed words he’d never say, just for a second in his eyes. That was priceless to me. Even as a kid, that’s all you need: to catch that fraction of a second of pride in your father’s eyes. I never needed anything more than that. The fact that he withheld praise, I think, prevented me from becoming complacent. He gave me enough praise to keep me going—and held back enough to keep me hungry. In fact, I think my parents’ tough motivational style, more than anything else, is what made me into a top-flight footballer. So many times after a match, when I’d done alright on the pitch, I’d get in the car and my mum would take the sandal off her foot and smack me on the back of the head—not to hurt or anything, just chiding me, because that’s the Samoan way of doing things. My dad, meanwhile, was peppering me with his criticisms: “Why are you smiling, son? You could’ve won 5–0 instead of 5–3. Why weren’t you tracking back from the midfield? Helping out the back four? Letting in those late goals is nothing to be proud of.” The funny thing was, when my parents said something similar to my brothers Sean and Chris, their response would be to nod and shrug: Yeah, so what? Not bothered. Yet each of my brothers in his own way was very gifted. Sean was an incredible goalkeeper and Chris, five years younger than me, was technically superb. My dad has often said that Chris had better footballing attributes than I did at his age. He was the more complete player, with better skills and a more developed body. Where my brothers would shrug off our father’s critique of our playing, I’d go home and dwell on it. Yeah, you know, Dad’s right, I’d say to myself. If only I’d taken a better touch, and simply passed the ball into the net, instead of trying to smash it—two feet wide of the post! I missed that chance—missed it … It would actually keep me awake at night, obsessing over the littlest mistakes my dad had scolded me for in some regular Under-10 or Under-11 game. It didn’t matter that I’d scored. I’d lie there angry at myself for the ones I hadn’t put in the back of the net. If a missed opportunity had meant a draw instead of a win, because I’d made the decision to go for power rather than simply pass the ball into the net, I’d beat myself up over it. I know that sounds ludicrously perfectionist for a kid of ten, but you’ve got to have that kind of drive to succeed in football. My commitment and passion were on a different level from either of my brothers’—and to this day, no one in the family knows exactly why. I wasn’t a normal kid. I’m the first to admit it. I was definitely not normal. I was so obsessed with football that when I got up in the morning, the first thing I did was look at my boots, making sure they were clean and spotless. Not a speck of dirt or a grass stain better be on them. They had to look brand new. I had various official team kits. I especially loved the Manchester United kits—the green and yellow away shirt and the classic red home kit with the tie-up front. I’d make sure they were all hung up, clean and neat in the closet, looking just like they were in a shop window. Before I left for school, I’d have my Lakemba or Canterbury Reps kit all laid out for when I got home, knowing I’d have after-school training. Boots spotless, shin pads perfect, my socks neatly laid out across the bed. When it was time to leave I had my trainers on, my boot bag ready, my water bottle filled—my parents didn’t have to do a thing. I already had that focussed mind-set of a full-time footballer. At a very young age I was self-disciplined and an extreme perfectionist. I can’t recall a time when I wasn’t this way: my brother Sean used to tease me about it. He still does, because I’m known as the one of the three boys who can’t stand clutter, disorganization or anything out of order in my home or with my clothes. I realize now, in hindsight, that in the six or seven years since I’d started playing football, a combination of my perfectionist personality, good role models, opportunities to play—even my mum’s Samoan whacks with her sandal and my dad’s post-match analysis—all of it turned a passion for the game of football into an obsession that would soon consume my life. GOLDEN BICYCLES AND OLYMPIC DREAMS (#ulink_188e2860-5835-5282-93c0-bb1acbc9a88c) FOOTBALL BECAME MY WHOLE WORLD. I fell hopelessly in love with the game. The only friends I had were my footballing friends. I had mates at school, but we didn’t get together after school. I really didn’t have a spare minute. I was so engrossed in the game that I watched it and trained every day. More importantly, I was learning to respect the game. At the age of seven, my dad took me to meet a key figure, a man who was to play a pivotal role in transforming my game. His name was Johnny Doyle. Johnny Doyle was the local guru of football, a former player turned coach, who was known for bringing out the best in players though private clinics and lessons. Before we even met, my dad told me about Johnny Doyle’s past: born in Ireland, he came to Australia and played professionally at centre-forward for various teams like South Sydney Croatia, Pan Hellenic, APIA Leichhardt and Canterbury-Marrickville Olympic. He’d even been called up for the Australian national team in 1970. After his playing days he became a coach at a high level for football teams in Australia. Johnny had the build of a classic No. 9—the strong centre-forward. A big dominating presence. He also had a schoolteacher’s mentality. He was a mathematics teacher at Kingsgrove North High School, where I would be enrolled a few years later. I started doing sessions with Johnny Doyle at the age of seven and continued until I was fifteen. Meeting him for the first time, I was excited but nervous. Here was this coach who’d made dozens of good players into great ones. And, according to my dad, there were even some players who used to train with Johnny Doyle right before they went overseas to trial with professional clubs. That was my dream. Somehow getting an overseas trial. Johnny was like the finishing act: the master trainer before any kid—any good Sydney-based player—jetted overseas. My dad’s opinion, at least, was that the only way I was going to make it as a professional footballer was under the tutelage of Johnny Doyle. He held his lessons on the little home pitch of St George Football Club. Simple clubhouse, locker room, three pitches. We used to park the car, jump over a little fence, then walk down this pathway to where Johnny Doyle would be waiting with his sack of footballs and his equipment. We’d do private lessons, just me individually, but also small group sessions of two or three. Those were usually with my brother Sean, and with a young player named David James who in later years would become one of my closest mates. Straightaway, I saw that Johnny was a different style of coach from any I’d met before: he stressed close ball control, quick touches, two-footed shooting—a more European or Latin American style of technical football. He changed my entire sense of touch and way of striking the ball. But the most important characteristic of Johnny Doyle’s style was belief. He took my game to the next level because he believed in me. Long before anyone else, he saw that I might really have a future in the sport. He recognized the intangibles: the drive, the fire, the passion. He saw that I loved football more than anything in the world besides my family. Some coaches just didn’t see it. They couldn’t look past my size. Johnny Doyle used endless repetition to develop my close-control skills. There are no shortcuts: loads of touches. Left foot, right foot. Left foot, right foot. Over and over and over. At training, we used to shoot against a brick wall. There was a small green door in the centre of the wall. We all called it the “magic door”. Hitting it meant you’d won a “golden bicycle”. Nothing fancy about these drills. Just a brick wall, a green door, and I’d shoot from fifteen or twenty metres out. We’d practise kicking against the wall over and over again, aiming for the green door. Johnny Doyle’s objective was to make me two-footed. The drill was two touches with your left foot, pass, hit the wall, two touches, pass, and hit the wall again. Ideally you could take the touch—kill the ball completely—strike it cleanly and hit the green door, then Johnny would say you’d won a golden bicycle. If you could take the touch and hit the green with your left foot, you’d earn two golden bicycles. A golden bicycle—man, it felt like you’d achieved something. It felt like scoring a goal in a competitive match. It was good fun, but if you were doing it with two other players there was added pressure. Johnny Doyle would always tell me to concentrate on what I was good at: whether that was heading or my vision. To play to my strengths. As a kid, I could play in the middle and find a through-pass other players didn’t see. I always had a good sense of space and peripheral vision on the pitch. We also worked for hours on all aspects of heading. People often say I’ve simply got an uncanny ability to jump, but it’s much more complex than that. If someone tests you and says, “Jump, Tim!” to touch the chalk line at the top of the wall, that’s a vastly different skill from jumping and heading a ball. The art of heading is leaping and being able to adjust to the ball mid-flight. Frequently, you’ll leap and, as the ball is making its cross, the spin on it will change its trajectory. It’ll dip, the wind will drop it; you’ll have to recalibrate your jump; not so high, bend over more. Heading well takes a combination of vertical leap, anticipation, intuition and a healthy dose of improvisation. Here’s an example: take an in-swinging ball from the left. Most likely this will have been kicked by the left foot of the sender, causing it to curl into you. You don’t want to head an in-curling ball too hard because you have both the ball itself and the spin to account for. You need to let the ball touch your head and convert that natural power and spin of the cross into a directed header. If you try to make too much contact, you’re guaranteed to sky that ball right over the crossbar. You’ll have zero control. The objective is to use the force of the cross, meet the ball and gently, with control, angle it on target. Teaching me this lesson, Doyle would say, “You don’t need power on it, Timmy. Just say good morning to the ball.” It’s a phrase of Johnny’s that I still remember—and teach in my youth academies to this day: Say good morning to the ball. Johnny Doyle taught emotions and attitudes as much as technical ability, physical drills, tactics and strategies on the pitch. He was the kind of football tutor who took on kids who’d been rejected for a variety of reasons, who could work with kids who didn’t even need physical training but needed only mental strengthening. That was often my problem as a kid—I lacked the mental skills that are often crucial in determining the outcome of a match. Few men I’ve ever met in football truly understand the psychological side of the game the way Johnny Doyle did. If I’d had a match with my club team and been tentative about shooting, Johnny would help me get inside my own thought processes. “Tim,” he’d say, “why didn’t you take the shot? What were you afraid of? You know you can hit that green door. You hit that five times out of seven—with your right foot and your left. Now picture yourself doing it in a game. What’s the difference? The only difference is that there’s more people around you, there’s an atmosphere that you need to block out.” Johnny Doyle understood that there was no way you can achieve success, maybe even greatness as an athlete—or anything in life, really—if you’re not mentally tough. “Hit the door, Tim,” he’d say. “It’s a fraction of the size of a real goal. Maybe one-fifth of a proper goal. Now take that small area and hit it every single time with power.” I took the confidence that came from earning Johnny Doyle’s golden bicycles and transferred it to my competitive match play. And, in later years, whenever I was out on the pitch, I still aimed for Johnny Doyle’s green door. The sense of inner pride, earning that golden bicycle, was immense. When I hit that green door with my left foot, it felt as big as if I’d scored a goal for Australia in the World Cup. It used to be in Australia that football was known as the sport of immigrants. Football—or “soccer” as it’s still generally called—wasn’t seen as a real Australian sport in the same way that cricket and rugby union were, even though we’ve produced world-class Australian footballers for decades. This was already changing quite bit when I was a kid in the 1980s, but traditionally the sport hierarchy remained: cricket, rugby league, and Australian rules football. They’ve been the dominant sports in the country and to this day remain the most popular. Football was seen as a game that had “flown here” with the immigrants. This led to some ugliness over the years, and I heard about it even as a youth player. Some of the kids’ fathers who grew up in Australia would talk about how the sport used to be referred to as wogball. Wog is a derogatory term for the immigrant Europeans—Greeks, Italians, Croatians, Serbians, Latin Americans—who were seen as the only people who played and enjoyed the sport. Fortunately, you almost never hear anyone in Australia calling it wogball any more. Even in my youngest playing days, I got thrown into that ethnic melting pot. Sydney Olympic Football Club played a huge part in my development. They were known throughout Sydney as the Greek team. Everything associated with the club was Greek. They had some other nationalities playing in the squad, but for the supporters, the hard-core fan-base, everything was Greek: the blue and white flags, the food eaten at the matches, the songs sung in the stands. It was a club run by Greeks, backed by Greeks, with a flavour straight out of Athens. First known as the Pan Hellenic Football Club, established in 1957 in Sydney by Greek immigrants, the team soon became one of the mainstays of the National Soccer League (NSL). Sydney Olympic’s main rivals were the Marconi Stallions, an Italian club to the core. Everywhere you looked in their stadium you’d see the tricolour flag of Italy—green, white and red. Men sported the Marconi Stallion jerseys and sometimes the famous Azzurri shirt of the Italian national team. In fact, Christian Vieri, the great Italian striker—tied for first as Italy’s record World Cup goal-scorer, along with Roberto Baggio and Paolo Rossi—lived in Sydney when he was younger and played for the Marconi Stallions. Sydney Olympic had a 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 (#ulink_92dc0555-d6b2-5547-9e08-e7fff6c6141d) 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 of land. The typical home in Samoa is called a fale, an open dwelling with a concrete base, some mats, four big poles and a roof. But if it rained—and the afternoon storms were often fierce—the rain would lash in through the sides. The fale is where they have village meetings, traditional ceremonies, feasts, as well as prayer for church on Sunday. It’s the centre for communal life in that tiny village. This visit to Samoa was different from the ones I’d made as a kid, trips I could hardly remember. Now, for the first time, my brother and I were fully immersed in our Samoan heritage and culture. In the mornings we bathed in a watering hole right across the road from where my grandmother lived. One side of the hole was for cleaning your clothes and the other side was for washing yourself. It was the strangest thing for a couple of kids from the suburbs of Sydney to look down and see a fish swimming at your feet as you’re soaping yourself up. Bathing that way is just an integral part of Samoan culture. No one bats an eye; you go down and have a wash in the local watering hole. Right next to you are other families bathing and also the local women are doing the laundry. The Under-20 team prepped in Samoa for three weeks before leaving for Fiji. When Sean and I weren’t training, we spent loads of time with my grandmother and we did it rough. We enjoyed mucking in, cleaning up, helping with the cooking—all while running back and forth from training. Living just the way most Samoans live their daily lives. We got so immersed in the culture that whenever we weren’t in our football kits we’d wear the national dress. The men wear a lava-lava—a type of simple sarong, often brightly coloured and with beautiful patterns. Sean and I would walk around the village in the lava-lava with no T-shirt, sometimes in flip-flops, sometimes barefoot, to and from the watering hole, looking exactly like the locals. My brother and I were there for football but, in truth, rugby is the important sport for most Samoans. Many of my own cousins became quite successful playing at both the club and the international level. It’s unreal the amount of talent that comes out of Samoa—a lot of it ends up in Australia in rugby league, or in New Zealand for rugby union and in New Zealand’s national team, the All-Blacks. In American Samoa, there’s also been an explosion of academies to discover talented youths to take to the USA to play in the National Football League. That’s largely due to the success in the States of islanders like Troy Polamalu, who grew up in California but is of Samoan descent. We got to know our extended family, all these rugby-playing uncles and cousins, most of whom had that typical Samoan male build: huge and powerful, which made me feel even smaller than I already did. There’s something in the Samoan genes—yes, the men are strong and big-boned, but they also tend to be quick and athletic. I never could sort out if it’s a combination of the diet and the outdoor lifestyle, but clearly there is also something in the Samoan DNA. You can see it as you stroll around the island, predominantly in the younger men: they’re basically naturally built athletes. Not every Samoan male is big and agile, but many are. They’ve had generations of natural training. It’s often said that the only tool a Samoan man needs is a machete: to cut the grass, to slash open a coconut, even chop down a tree. Because my grandmother was so ill, Sean and I would wake at 5:30 a.m., fetch water for tea, then walk down to the bakery, which opened at 6 a.m., to get hot bread. We used to have this delicious New Zealand butter spread really thick on the toasted bread, with a cup of hot tea, and if you were lucky maybe some baked beans or spaghetti from a can. That was considered a special treat. Normally, when you go into camp as an international, you think you’ll stay in a hotel, get tracksuits, proper kits. Not in Samoa. When we went to meet the staff and the players—a few of whom had flown in from New Zealand—we realized most were locals and were dirt-poor. Some of the boys had no football boots, or if they did, the boots were in horrible condition, not even the correct size for their feet. The training pitches were awful—the grass was very high, the field was lumpy, the goalposts were wonky. The quality of the play was poor and the organization was disjointed. Once we put all the boys together, you could see what a mixed bag we had on our hands: some were above-average footballers, but some had mostly played rugby, so they had some stamina but minimal technique. You could see from the outset we were unlikely to be bringing home any silverware from Fiji. Still, for me, that camp was a brilliant experience. Not for the footballing but for the cultural values I learned—the traditional way of life; feeling myself, for one of the first times in my life, to be truly a Samoan. When we ate, we cooked collectively as a team, mostly foods from the plantation like taro and pork, though sometimes we’d whip up some chop suey. The players would cook together, and then we’d all sit on the floor cross-legged and eat in the fale. It was basic, but it was also so real. This was more than just playing football. As part of the process of building our bond as a team, we’d say a prayer before and after every game. This prayer, called the Toa Samoa, is a spiritual expression in the form of a song, a profound symbol of the country and people. We’d clap at the same time—passionate, aggressive, singing the Toa Samoa in harmony. It’s not exactly like the haka in New Zealand rugby, but there’s a similarity: you’d better sing it with everything you’ve got, because it’s seen as much more than an anthem. My parents helped gather funds to send over all new kits and football boots. In fact, Sean and I brought over three suitcases between us and came home with virtually nothing in them. We ended up giving all our clothes away. Did we really need them? We had so much more than these island kids. We figured they’d appreciate jeans or trainers or jumpers more than us. We used to jog together as a team, someone sitting on the back of the ute, singing a Samoan song, egging us on, and we’d run that way, three or four miles, to get to training. Some boys had holes in their shoes, a couple were actually running barefoot, while my brother and I wore perfect new trainers from Australia. At the end of a month in Samoa, we went to Fiji and didn’t perform well at all in the Under-20 tournament—lost every single match, in fact, and I played for only a handful of minutes, coming on as a substitute late in a game that was already a lost cause. Little did I realize the impact those few minutes would have later in my life. No one had a crystal ball when I was fourteen. No one knew that I was going to become a professional; no one knew I’d go to England and learn my trade. And certainly no one could have imagined that I might someday be called up to represent my country and that those few moments on the pitch in one game for Samoa would become a huge legal complication for me. Despite the trouble it caused, I have absolutely no regrets about living there and playing for Samoa. On the contrary, it changed my whole outlook on life. In Samoa, they grow up with virtually nothing: sun, sand, the plantation, a few livestock—it’s so bare-bones and simple. Virtually everyone visiting Samoa looks at these islanders and feels sorry for them. I did, myself, the first time I saw my family and their friends in Samoa. But my mind-set changed. Today I don’t feel the least bit sorry for them. Why? Because they’re happy. Imagine being in Samoa, living in a fale with just four poles holding up the roof, where everyone you love sleeps together, eats together, gathers for family meetings. Imagine having nothing more than the sand, sea, food and family—all the essential things in life. What more do you really need? In fact, now that I’m thirty-five and have had a successful career, have travelled the world, I can tell you: in general, those kids in Samoa—and most of the adults, too—are happier than a lot of millionaires in Sydney or Melbourne, London or New York, who live in mansions or penthouse apartments and drive luxury cars to the fanciest shopping malls. The Samoan life is simple, it’s true, but they’re content. They don’t need the things we have; they haven’t grown soft and dependent on our culture of excess. They’re happy with the lifestyle that revolves around freedom and nature and love of one’s family. That trip with my brother Sean to be with our grandmother was one of the greatest eye-openers for me. It helped me learn what’s really important—that life can be simple, without any luxuries, but still filled with satisfaction and fulfilment. BEATING THE ODDS (#ulink_494c2179-5e2e-5dcf-bf31-d75c9bdd9533) THE BIGGEST STRIKE AGAINST ME at that age—and another reason I was often told I wasn’t being realistic about my dreams of being a professional footballer in England—was that I was still very small. In high school, I was only 165 cm tall and weighed only 55 kilos. Some of the stars of the global game, whose pictures I clipped out of glossy magazines and pinned up on my wall, weren’t much bigger. The two Brazilian strikers of the 1994 World Cup—Bebeto and Romario—had pride of place on my wall and were hardly giants. Romario had a stockier build, but on the pitch Bebeto was so slight he looked like a teenager who’d stolen his father’s shorts for the game—and yet in that 1994 World Cup he was a superstar. He routinely beat defenders, had incredible touch, laid effortless passes for Romario, and together they formed the most beautiful strike partnership. I was well aware that in the Australian mind-set of that time, I was nowhere near the height and weight and strength of a professional athlete—a striker who could outleap 183-cm tall central defenders to gain purchase on a header inside the penalty box. Australian coaches were scouting for the classic “target man” forward—a big No. 9 who could play with his back to goal in the mould of Gary Lineker or Marco van Basten. I wasn’t that kid, but one of the brilliant things about football is that your skills, technique and passion can counterbalance your opponent’s advantages in size and strength. Picture Maradona famously dribbling through the entire England defence in the 1986 World Cup—a masterpiece of close control, change of pace, feinting and balance—to score that match winner voted the “Greatest Goal of the Century”. To this day, people debate why football under-performs at the international level in certain countries—England is a prime example—and whether an emphasis on physical strength over technical skills at the youth development level is to blame. It’s a complex question, and I don’t claim to have all the answers. But I do know that when I was growing up, I played with quite a few smaller South American kids—gifted athletes with phenomenal touch and dribbling skills—who didn’t succeed in the Australian system. They quit football because they were told they were too small. It just wasn’t in fashion to favour technique over physique. Fast-forward a couple decades and it’s almost inconceivable how much the game has changed. Nowadays some of the best players in the world are only 165 cm, 168 cm or 170 cm tall. Guys like Messi, Xavi, Tevez—some of the most talented players in the game. But had they been in Australia in my schoolboy days, players as short as Tevez or Messi, or as slight as David Silva, would surely have been told they were too small and not strong enough to make it. In my opinion, a kid’s size—or lack of size—should never be seen as an impediment to success at the highest levels of football. Even at a young age I was aware that my size could be seen as a disadvantage, but I was determined that it would never stand in my way. By high school, I’d managed to gain a reputation as a top-club player; I also started to shine in school sport. I played in the Primary Schools Sports Association league. Then there came a chance to play for the representative school district team called Metropolitan East. This was a public school select team, in the same way that Canterbury Reps was a clubs’ select team. Playing for Metropolitan East was a significant milestone in my development. The squad was drawn from dozens of schools—Canterbury, Eastern Suburbs and St George—but only one kid per school was chosen. Even though my talent was still a bit raw, being selected was a recognition of my hard work. We played in an intense competition in Sutherland, in south Sydney, right next to Cronulla Oval, ten games going on at once against other district select squads. On days like that, you try to keep your wits about you on the pitch, but it’s such a nervous moment—you know if you do well you could potentially be selected to represent your state: the whole of New South Wales. We spent the entire day playing matches. Even at that age, I planned everything in my mind, hyper-analysing, trying to anticipate how to shape my performance. What did I need to do to stand out in a tournament like this, where there were so many good midfielders? Did I need to score goals? Did I need to be unselfish and more creative? Should I allow myself a few minutes of dribbling, bossing the play, or immediately lay-off a clever through-pass? One thing I knew: I had to impress. Youth football is a series of tests and trials, of potential opportunities and life-changing matches and tournaments, and I knew this was one of my first big chances to break through. After hours of pounding, intense action, I found myself sitting at the end of the tournament with hundreds of other kids, cross-legged on one of the pitches. All our parents were there as well and all the coaches in their light-blue tracksuits, every one of them with a clipboard: “When we call your name, please come forward. You’ve been selected for the preliminary squad for the New South Wales PSSA Team.” Various players would get called out, they’d stand—the adults would cheer. I’d already done the calculations: I figured there were so many matches going on simultaneously, the odds were that the coaches had seen at least four or five highly skilled midfielders who were taller and stronger than me. I told myself I’d better accept that I wouldn’t be called. A few of the lads from my representative squad had been chosen for their district teams and had played in the same tournament. Some of them had already been called and as their names were read, they stood up confidently, striding forward to form a line behind the coaches. They had an air that told me they’d known all along that they were head and shoulders better than the rest of us. It wasn’t cockiness; it was just confidence in their abilities. Then one of the coaches read out: “Metropolitan East. Tim Cahill …” My eyes shot open wide, I jumped to my feet and half-ran toward the rest of the guys who’d formed up in the queue behind the coaches. I had worked so hard for this, I was nearly in tears. Some of the guys selected were on a different planet. They were the best physical specimens, not just from our local schools or New South Wales, but in all of Australia. They were fast and strong. Some were enormous for that age: they looked like men with full moustaches, dark hair over their legs and arms, muscles like they were eighteen or nineteen years old. We have team photos of that NSW select squad—I look like a baby compared to some of them. We had one striker in the NSW team whose body was so well developed that when midfielders kicked the ball over the top to him, he’d burst onto it like an Olympic sprinter. He terrorised defenders, thundering down on them with that pace and his legs churning. The NSW team was in great form and we ended up winning the entire tournament. And yet, for some of those well-built kids, that select team was the pinnacle of their careers. Many of them stopped developing at fifteen or sixteen years old and never went further in football than that NSW representative team. It’s a lesson I learned only in hindsight: nothing is ever predetermined. It’s a constant reminder to work hard, stay focussed and never believe that your future is assured. My obsession with football was so complete at that age that it felt as if I went from game to practice to trial, to another team and another tournament, and back again. By this point Sydney Olympic was home; I’d been there five years. I’d learned Greek, made great friends, become part of the culture. Now, after my experience with the NSW select team, I dreamed of making Olympic’s first team and playing for them in the NSL. The way the system worked, each year—regardless of how many years you’d played in the youth teams—you had to try out again. In my fifth year, I went to trial for the Olympic youth team, but despite my best efforts, I was not selected. When he asked why, my dad was told by one of the coaches, “Tim’s too small and not fast enough.” “Yeah?” my dad said. “Alright—we’ll see …” As it sank in, I realized that the coaches had essentially determined that I would never shine in the NSL, so they decided to drop me and develop younger team players they felt had more potential. I don’t want to fault the coaches completely. It could have been the case that at fourteen I was still too undeveloped physically, but all I knew at the time was that, emotionally, I was crushed. All my mates played in the team. I knew I was getting better every year; I knew I was giving my all in every match and in every training session. I knew I was progressing, but with their rejection I felt as if everything I had worked for was being closed off to me. My dad remained upbeat. He said we’d just hit a bump in the road and we’d continue the private training with Johnny Doyle. But it kept echoing in my mind: Too small. Not strong enough. Not fast enough … I said to my dad, “There’s got to be somewhere I can go to get stronger.” My parents did some looking around, then decided to send me to the Institute of Sport in Lidcombe. The institute is a world-class facility, set up to test athletes in every facet of their ability: speed, reaction time, vertical jump. I did a fifty-metre run; they timed it, but also made a video so we could review my form. They taught me how to jump more explosively and, for the first time, I had nutritionists analysing my diet. I was looking for a reason—some scientific explanation—as to why the hell I didn’t get picked for Sydney Olympic. It may have been nothing more than bad luck, but I’m not a big believer in blaming things on luck—good or bad. To this day I often say, “Luck is great, but if I want to be lucky I’ll go buy a lottery ticket.” If things don’t go your way, sometimes you have to do everything in your power to put yourself back in the position of achieving your goals. My failure to make the next level at Sydney Olympic filled me with doubt, had me believing, rightly or wrongly, that perhaps I wasn’t ready, that perhaps what the coaches were saying was true—I wasn’t tall enough, strong enough or fast enough. After completing the initial assessment at the institute, I was given a program to rework my body mechanics. “We’re going to change the way you run,” one of the instructors told me. They replayed the video of me, showing me how my arms flew out too wide, how my thigh movement could be improved. They had me change my running style by keeping my arms and legs in tight, close to my body, moving like a track-and-field sprinter: right-knee left-arm, left-knee right-arm. In reality, you don’t need blazing speed over distance to be a top footballer. Very rarely in open play are you covering fifty metres of the pitch at a full sprint. You only need to have explosive pace in those first ten or fifteen metres. That’s where the scientific analysis of my running paid dividends. Being quicker off the mark helped me beat my opponents and put me in position to receive a pass. Changing my running style didn’t come easily, but by working tirelessly on my coordination and rhythm, I made my running style more complete. My parents bought a small trampoline, which the instructors told me I should put in my bedroom, in front of the mirror, so I could watch myself. They recommended this as a way to study my form, running until I was out of breath. I also did lunges and sit-ups and push-ups and box-jumps—the basics of plyometrics. I went a bit crazy with it, I suppose. I did this same bloody routine every day until I was drenched in sweat. I can be an extremist when I’m trying to improve something and I reckon my friends and brothers, maybe even my parents, were looking at me saying, “Timmy’s finally gone round the bend.” While other kids were off doing what normal teenagers do after school—watching TV, hanging out at shopping centres—I was working out in the bedroom, sweat pouring off me. At the institute, they shot more video and we analysed it. I returned home and kept working on my form, kept telling myself, “I’m going to be a machine.” The institute, the plyometrics, the trampoline workout—they all helped. But I still needed to play football. Since I couldn’t play for Sydney Olympic, we had to find a club that would take me. My dad found yet another Greek club, Belmore Hercules, which played two divisions lower. Belmore Hercules is not quite as well known as Sydney Olympic, but it is still a proud club, founded in 1971. My dad and I went to Belmore for the trial and I told them I’d been playing for five years for Sydney Olympic. A few of the players and staff recognized me. By now, to be honest, Olympic’s rejection was a massive blow to my confidence, but it was also a reality check. I said to myself, “If you make it through trials, you’re playing here, in a lower division, because this is your proper level.” Luckily, I was selected. Once again, I was much younger than all the other players. At Hercules, there were Under-18s, Under-21s and then the adult first team—and at the age of fifteen I was by far the youngest kid in the Under-18s. My dad volunteered as one of the assistant managers, which I found a bit uncomfortable. I’d seen it plenty of times where one of the coaches was a parent of a kid in the team. People would snicker when the kid was named captain or played all ninety minutes just because his dad was on the touchline with a clipboard and a whistle. I didn’t want anyone thinking I’d made the starting squad because my dad was pulling strings. It was in fact quite the opposite, since my dad didn’t volunteer until I’d already been selected at trials. In the end, it didn’t matter—I knew that my work rate and quality on the pitch would speak for itself. Sean was our starting goalkeeper; I played as an attacking-midfielder, sometimes as an outright striker. It was one of the best footballing seasons I ever had. I started scoring a lot of goals, then after one particularly good match with the Under-18s, I was called in by the coach. “Tim, if you’re not too worn out, I think we should play you in the Under-21s as well.” I wanted the opportunity and played with both the Under-18s and the Under-21s. The season roared along until I suddenly found myself on a goal record and my name, for the first time, started appearing in the local press. The Greek papers were writing about me. The local Sydney sports writers were noticing me. And again, a lot of what had got me noticed was my heading: “Cahill jumps like a kangaroo.” I had never stopped training in how to head the ball, and would still practise with my dad, with Johnny Doyle and with friends. Those explosive jumping drills, squats, and lunges I’d been doing in my bedroom had made my natural leaping ability all that much more powerful. Even at less than 167 cm in height, I was often able to jump higher than defenders who were over 183 cm tall. It was due to a combination of factors: vertical leap, timing and desire. No one was going to out-leap me or out-muscle me as I planted my head on that cross. John Xipolitas was the first-team coach for Belmore Hercules. They had some big players from the NSL who’d come to play for Belmore’s first team during the off-season, because it was their old club. I played in one Under-18s game and was gearing up to play for the Under-21s when Coach Xipolitas said to me in his heavy Greek accent: “Tim, you won’t play with the Under-21s today.” “What do you mean?” “Today I want you to play in first team.” The Hercules’ first team played at Belmore Oval, right across the road from Canterbury Boys School. Everyone—all the fans and the families of the players—sat on the hill or stood behind the clubhouse and huddled around the souvlaki stand. It was a big deal on the weekends for the Hercules faithful to gather at Belmore Oval for the first-team matches. To this day, I’m still the youngest player ever to lace his boots for the Belmore first team. I was a small fifteen-year-old, playing with grown men. At one point, late in the match, the coach waved me on as a substitute at a set-piece. I ran on just as one of our midfielders was about to take a corner. The way the play unfolded, it took me straight back to my days with Marrickville Red Devils—the first time I’d ever scored in a match with my head. The ball came over from the right, I jumped with three other defenders—men who were much bigger than me. I managed to climb out of the pack: not using vertical leap, but proper timing of my run. There was no luck involved. I saw the ball, knew I was going to get my head on it but now the quality of the contact was the most important thing. Eyes wide open, I opened my body up a bit, my right shoulder squared, then I headed it down, aiming for the bottom right corner. The grass was a little wet, and I turned and watched as the ball skipped past the goalkeeper, billowing the net. I was swarmed by my team-mates! Even the other team—after the match—came over to congratulate me on the quality of the header that won us the league. I was named top scorer in the league that year: thirty goals in all competitions for all three teams—Under-18s, Under-21s and first team—the most goals ever scored in a season for Belmore Hercules. I’d been cut by Sydney Olympic for the Under-18s squad—wasn’t considered good enough—but I could start for the first team of Belmore Hercules, albeit two divisions below, and win the championship and the overall scoring record. That was one of my proudest moments growing up as a footballer in Australia. I had spent that entire season trying to recover from being dropped by Sydney Olympic, but I made something of the setback. I had scored big goals practically every week for Hercules with the Under-18s and Under-21s, and now I’d come on in a big match to score the winner with the first team. At Hercules, I blossomed and found my niche. In the end, being dropped by Sydney Olympic might have been the best thing that could have happened to me. PART 02 (#ulink_ca4013d7-d7a5-5959-b496-e2e1b1c2dd9b) SACRIFICES (#ulink_9b6c87d3-c06e-545e-94e8-b0cb41686aeb) THROUGHOUT MY HIGH SCHOOL YEARS at Kingsgrove North I continued playing high-level football—now for Sydney United, a club as heavily influenced by its Croatian culture as Sydney Olympic was by its Greek origins. Though I ended up staying less than a full season, Sydney United was another stepping stone, a club with a rich history where I had a chance to play with some fantastic youth talent like Joel Griffiths and David James—my old mate from the Johnny Doyle private training lesson. Phil Pavela, our coach, really believed in me, could see that I had potential even if I still needed some polish. That’d been the story of my life with some coaches: they either saw the future player I could become or they didn’t. Sydney United played at Edensor Park—a beautiful 12,000-seat stadium—against all the big teams like Marconi and Olympic. Coach Pavela gave me a lot of playing time with the Under-21s, pushed me hard in training, but also helped me a lot off the park, becoming close with my family. Then one day, midway through Year 11, I got home from school and something was different in the house. “Have a seat, Tim,” my dad said. “We need to have a chat.” I put my things down and joined my parents at the kitchen table. “I’ve made a few calls to England,” my father began. Now I glanced at my mum and I could see she was upset. She’d been crying a few minutes earlier. I lost track of what my father was saying. Anytime my mum’s upset, I’m upset. “… In any event, we think you’re ready,” Dad said. “We’ve got an opportunity to send you to England and we think it’s the right time …” “What? England?” “You’re just sixteen,” my mum said. “You have to tell us—is this something you really want to do?” I sat there, silently mulling it over. “It’s not going to be easy,” she continued. “You’re not going to be at home. You’re going to be …” “Where will I live?” “You’ll be staying with Mum’s relatives,” Dad said. “Glen and Lindsey,” Mum said. “The Stanleys.” I remembered seeing a photograph or two, but I really had no connection besides recognizing their names. I asked what club I would have a trial with. What my dad said came as a bit of a shock. “You don’t have an official trial as yet, but don’t worry about that. I’ll be working out the details. If we can get you a trial—and it’s still a big if—you’re going to have to wait in England. Nothing’s guaranteed, Tim. We don’t even know if you’ll get a trial this year, so you may have to enrol in school. But you’ll need to be over there if and when we get that call.” My dad had already made calls to a man named Allen Batsford. He’d been the manager of Wimbledon and was now a talent scout for Nottingham Forest. I didn’t understand the details fully, but Allen Batsford had a relationship with the Millwall youth team as well. Dad had also been in touch with another guy named Bob Pearson, who at the time was the chief scout for Millwall Football Club. Once I heard those names—Millwall and Nottingham Forest—I was sold on the idea. Just to have a shot at a trial for a professional football club in England was enough for me. “But listen to me, Tim,” Mum said. “You’re the only one who can say if you’re ready to do it.” “Ready to go off and live with Mum’s relatives all on your own?” Dad said. “Do you understand what that’ll mean?” “Yeah, I understand,” I said, though I really hadn’t a clue. Maybe my dad saw the uncertainty in my face, because he said: “There’s another route, you know. You can stay here, live at home, finish up your schooling and play in Australia.” I thought about that—about not making it with Sydney Olympic, dropping to a lower division to prove what I could do with Belmore Hercules. That was a tough battle, and even though things were now going well for me at Sydney United, I sensed that having a career as a professional footballer at home—given the tastes of the Australian system at the time for strikers and attacking-midfielders who looked a lot different from me—just wasn’t going to happen. “I’ll never make it here, Dad. I won’t get a chance to play in Australia. I want to go to England and at least give it a go.” My mum had a few more tears in her eyes. “Tim, listen to me,” she said. “It’s gonna be tough. You’ll be on your own.” I turned and said to her, “I know it’s going to be tough. But if you’re telling me you’ve got a ticket for me to go to England, I’m saying I’m ready.” “You’re going to be living in the middle of nowhere, you’re not going to have much money,” Dad added. “Pretty much the clothes on your back, not much else. And you’re going to have to wait for your trial, assuming Allen or Bob can even get you one.” “I don’t care, Dad. I just want the chance.” I understood at least some of the sacrifices I’d be making—less so the many sacrifices my mum and dad had already made, and would continue to make. Suddenly, a hand was on my shoulder. I turned and saw Sean. “Bloody hell—you ready, Tim?” There was such pride in his voice. “Yeah, I’m ready,” I said. But looking up at Sean, I felt suddenly conflicted; I was thinking about Sean’s own football career. In the preceding year, Sean had made one of the biggest sacrifices of anyone. Mum and Dad were prepared to take out a loan to finance my trip to England for a trial, but to allow me to continue my studies at Kingsgrove North and to keep playing football, Sean had left school to work as a mechanic and was bringing in money to help pay the household bills. He didn’t complain, never said a word. He just went to work, contributing every week to help my parents cover rent and bills. Some of those bills were to support my dream of being a professional footballer. Now, as a result of his sacrifice, I had an opportunity to go overseas—and he didn’t. I felt such mixed emotions, because I was trying to put myself in Sean’s shoes. Why was I being given the chance and not him? It’s not in Sean’s nature to be envious and resentful. He’s a true Samoan older brother—very protective—and he wanted me to succeed for the overall pride of the family. All of this churned around in my brain at the kitchen table. He didn’t realize it at the time—and probably doesn’t know to this day that I ever thought about what that decision meant for him—but I did. It wasn’t that Sean wasn’t a good enough footballer to get the chance at the professional level. It was that in our Samoan family, culture and tradition meant that, as the oldest son, he had to make the hard sacrifice, so that I could have a chance at going the distance. Sean was a hell of a goalkeeper and I knew he was good enough to warrant a trial. Could he have played in the English leagues, even made it up to the Premiership someday? In hindsight, I can only say maybe—because so many factors come into play that are really beyond one’s control, one’s own ability and drive. Who would have had the better outcome between us? It’s an impossible question to answer, and I don’t think my dad ever made that calculation. The truth was that the answer at that moment was the same for both of us. We were in it together. Could we make it? Were we good enough? In the end, it was me who got the opportunity to go to England for trial and Sean who stayed in Sydney, going to work every day. Thoughts about the sacrifices my family made have never left my mind. In fact, my career is built on the shoulders of loads of folks—my earliest coaches, Johnny Doyle, Mum and Dad, of course—but also my big brother, Sean. In the weeks before the trip, I remember going to bed at night and lying there with my eyes open for hours, thinking about Sean not getting a trial and me getting one. I’d think about my mum and dad taking out a loan to finance the trip. Tossing from side to side. What if I didn’t make it? What if I didn’t even get the call for a trial? Nothing was guaranteed, Dad said … My brain raced for hours with these sorts of worries. There were nights when, by 3 a.m., rather than feeling that the chance to go to England was a big break—and an opportunity to make the Cahill family proud—I felt enormous pressure. If I didn’t do everything just perfectly, we’d all be embarrassed … and Mum and Dad would be paying off some massive debt. Worse, I’d have screwed up everyone’s life, not just my own. The time finally came to go to England. I’d done my intensive last weeks of one-on-one training with Johnny Doyle and everyone was in agreement: I was as prepared as I was ever going to be. On the day I had set aside to say my goodbyes to everyone at Kingsgrove North, I went looking for Rebecca Greenfield. She wasn’t my girlfriend—just a real cool mate. We often talked about our dreams and aspirations, what we’d both do when we were adults. “What do you reckon you’ll do when you get older?” Bek would ask. “Reckon I’ll play football.” “No,” she’d laugh. “To make money, Tim. As a career.” “I’ll play football. That’s how I’ll make my living.” At that, Bek would almost double over with laughter. “Can’t you ever be serious for once? What do you think you’ll really do?” “Most likely in England. Yeah, I’m going to be a professional footballer in England.” It had been like this for years, since Bexley North Public School. It had always been the same answer. “What are you going to be when you grow up, Timmy?” “Professional footballer.” In fact, in my career studies course in Kingsgrove North, we’d been required to choose subjects and write them on a sheet of paper. Some were mandatory, of course: maths, English, science, history. I wrote down my electives as French, Italian, and Spanish. I remember the teacher’s reaction when she read that list. “French?” she said. “Just in case I play football in France.” “And Italian?” “In case I play in Italy.” “And Spanish in case you play in Spain?” She was laughing at me now. “That’s right. In case I end up playing in Spain.” Later, that teacher took me aside. “Come on, Tim, you can’t keep thinking like this.” “Like what?” “With this tunnel vision that you’re only going to be a footballer.” “Why not?” “Tim, there’s nothing wrong with having a Plan B.” “Why do I need a Plan B?” “Because things don’t always follow a script. It’s fine to dream of being a footballer, but you should have another career choice, a fall-back plan.” I nodded, but I really didn’t care what she was saying. She thought I was being a smart-arse—when in fact I was only being honest. I’m sure somewhere, jotted down in red ink in a teacher’s notebook in Kingsgrove North is the assessment: Timothy Cahill—unrealistic. Has his mind set on being a professional footballer. On that final day of school at Kingsgrove North, I finally found Rebecca. “Bek, I don’t know if I’ll see you again for a long while. I’m leaving in a week.” “What are you on about, Tim?” “I’m leaving school today,” I said. “It’s my last full day. Next week I’m flying to England.” “For what?’ “I’m going to be a professional footballer.” Again she thought I was clowning around, but then she saw the changed look in my eyes. “Well, good luck, Tim. Hope you make it.” I told her that early that day, I’d tried to ring her at her house to give her the news and spoken briefly to her great-grandfather, Lou. He was originally from London, a massive Tottenham supporter. When I told him I was leaving for England, hoping to get a trial at Millwall, Lou was so enthusiastic. “Millwall—great club,” he said. “I hope you make the team, son. If you can play at Millwall, you can play anywhere.” That was a powerful statement and it stuck with me for years. I could never have imagined the life I’d later have with Rebecca. She was someone I had a strong connection with through high school. But looking back, I suppose it was already the kind of bond that would later become the basis for something deeper. I completed my goodbyes and, unlike Rebecca, most of my teachers and schoolmates met my news with eye-rolling and a bit of sarcasm. To be fair, a few did wish me well at chasing my dream, even if deep down they thought it was a long shot. Like my career studies teacher, a few of the staff cautioned me to be balanced. “You’re a good player, Tim,” one teacher told me, “but make sure you keep up with school work.” As if to say: it’ll likely not work out for you, chasing this footballer’s dream—so please, son, have something to fall back on. I didn’t have a fall-back plan, because I had no intention of falling back. ENGLAND (#ulink_7d9335d8-3982-5bb0-bd5a-d96542079bda) I WAS STILL A CHILD when I made the trip to England in late-1997. I remember saying a tearful goodbye to my parents at the airport, but I was also filled with excitement. I’d never been on a flight alone, even a short one within Australia. My trips to Samoa had always been with Sean or Mum and Dad. During that long flight from Sydney to London, I had no idea how to occupy myself, given all the excitement I felt. I watched movie after movie after movie. Between films, I read football magazines about the Premiership. I read the statistics of every team and player from the First Division and Second Division, trying to memorize the details as if I had to pass an examination upon my arrival in London. Halfway through the flight, in the middle of watching Meet Joe Black, my mind started racing again. I wasn’t even in England and I was already feeling homesick. I suppose it was only now beginning to sink in—the massive leap into the unknown I was about to make. When the plane landed at Heathrow, Glen and Lindsey Stanley were there to meet me. They were so welcoming that not even for an instant did I feel like a stranger. Glen immediately treated me like a son—gave me a big powerful hug—and straightaway I felt his warmth. Lindsey’s from New Zealand, a Kiwi girl—just brilliant. We drove to their home in Dartford and met their kids: the boys Ben, Michael and Sam, and their youngest, daughter Olivia. Everyone who knows me can tell you I’m never happier than when I’m surrounded by a bunch of kids. That’s another very Samoan trait. Throw five kids in a room with me, and a baby in my lap, and that’s when I’m most relaxed. Had the Stanley kids been older than me, who knows? Perhaps I might have felt a bit ill at ease—but now, in this house with three boys and a girl all various ages, and all younger than me—yes, I felt right at home. The Stanleys lived in a three-storey terrace house. Space was pretty tight already, with two parents and four kids—now five, including me. There was a small kitchen and lounge room, a sliver of a backyard. I shared a room with the boys—double bunk beds—and Olivia had her own room. Soon as I sorted things out, I called my mum and dad. I couldn’t have sounded happier, and I remember hearing the relief in my mum’s voice. “Yeah, I’m running around with the kids,” I said. “No worries, Mum. Glen and Lindsey are fantastic, they’ve welcomed me with open arms …” Looking back on it, I can see how lucky I was to be in that Samoan atmosphere, in that communal island-style environment. There was never a moment of isolation. Breakfast, lunch and dinner, we were together. It was a bit like being in camp on Samoa during the build-up to the tournament in Fiji, where we all ate together and helped out with the cleaning up and doing the chores. Finally, after a day or two settling in, I made the call to Allen Batsford, the former Wimbledon manager, whom my dad had been talking to about coordinating my trials. “Heard good things about you already, Tim,” Allen said when I rang him. “Just give me some time. Could take weeks, could take months, but we’ll get you sorted.” Months? Months sounded like an eternity to me—I was so eager to get on with things—but I’d been well warned by my dad that nothing was guaranteed. I hoped for a trial with a professional club, but things had to run their course, in their own time. I’d come so early, it wasn’t even pre-season yet for the professional clubs. That was over a month away, so what was I going to do? I needed to stay fit. The Stanleys, like a lot of Samoans, were a big rugby family. Glenn’s brother, Joe Stanley, is a legend in New Zealand rugby and is also known as Smokin’ Joe. He was the centre in the All-Blacks side that won the Rugby World Cup in 1987. He and his brothers and cousins are sometimes called the “Stanley Rugby Clan”, which includes Joe and Jeremy Stanley. Michael, Ben and Sam all played for the local youth rugby team. In fact, all three boys would go on to have distinguished careers playing rugby at youth, club and international levels. When I’d go out to watch them play with their local rugby clubs, it didn’t take long to catch the bug. No way was I going out and getting into a scrum with some of those giants, but I decided to join the touch-rugby team. Touch rugby—it’s mainly known in Australia as “touch football”—is a variation of rugby with six rather than fifteen players. Its rules are similar to standard rugby league, minus the scrums and hard tackling. As soon as you’re tagged with two hands you stop running and put the ball on the ground just as if you’d been tackled. I joined up for touch rugby as part of my fitness regimen. Being so much older than the Stanley kids, I ended up playing with Glenn on the adult touch team, and soon made some friends. We’d all hang out in the pub, muddy and sweaty, after running around the pitch for a couple hours. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t in school during the academic year, so when the Stanley kids left in the morning, I’d wake up with them, eat my breakfast and get to it. No way was I going to sit about the house reading magazines or watching TV. My dad always told me that being a professional footballer was a job—no different from being a bricklayer, teacher or doctor. I had to treat my training as serious work. I’d get my football, head out to the local park—about a five-minute jog—lace up my boots, juggle the ball, do some laps, then some sprints. I’d pretty much follow the set routine I’d followed since my assessment by the Institute of Sport. I felt like Dartford was in the middle of nowhere. While everyone my age was off at school, there I was alone in that little park running wind sprints and juggling the ball and taking practice free kicks. Truth be told, it was miserable. Coming from Sydney’s hot climate, my first weeks in England seemed so bloody cold. Many days the skies were completely grey or filled with a cold, lashing rain. It made me realize how lucky I’d been growing up in a city like Sydney, with its green landscape and beaches. It was more than cold—the atmosphere of that season and the park itself felt almost eerie. The park was immense—it had eight training pitches—but none of them were in use in the middle of a work and school day. I was completely alone out there, and sometimes I’d get this otherworldly feeling, picturing what I must have looked like to a plane passing overhead: a solitary figure practising football, lost in a sea of green. Day after day, that was my routine. Even to the housewives and postmen in the neighbourhood, I must have seemed mad. I can tell you, if it had gone on much longer, I would have been. I realized how important it was for me to have more in my life than solitary training. I needed to be part of a community. I was doing what I had to do, yes, but it was vital for me to have the Stanley kids, as well as Glenn and Lindsey and my new mates on Glenn’s adult touch-rugby team. After six weeks, football pre-season started in earnest, and at last I got a phone call from Allen Batsford. “Lad, it’s time,” Allen said. “You ready? Can’t promise you anything but let’s have a look at you.” Allen made a phone call to Bob Pearson, the head scout of Millwall at that time. Because I was so nervous that day, I wore the socks and shorts of two different clubs, and my favourite Manchester United jersey—such a crazy look. I was a ball of energy. I got picked up to meet Allen and Bob for the first time face to face. “Son, nice to finally meet you, what’ve you been up to?” Bob asked. I described my daily regimen of training solo, jogging down to the park, even some of the more advanced exercises I’d learned back home at the Institute of Sport in Sydney. And keeping up my cardio fitness with the touch-rugby league. That was all well and good, but they both wanted to know about my footballing. When was the last time I’d played in a match? “I suppose it’s been … well, nearly three months ago.” “You think you’re fit for trial?” Bob asked, looking a bit concerned. “I’m fit,” I said. “I can run all day. I’ve been training hard. No doubt in my mind I’m match-fit.” “Alright then. We’re going to take you to the training facilities in Bromley, throw you in with a few of the new boys. Some of the older boys as well. You’ll have a run around. We’ll see where you’re at.” It seemed all very matter-of-fact to them, but for me this was one of the biggest mornings of my life. I knew my future—at least whatever career I might have as a professional footballer—was dependent on what I did in the next sixty or ninety minutes. What they’d casually called a run around … Millwall’s home is the famous South London stadium known as the Den. But the Millwall first team, reserves, youth team and academy all trained at a facility six-and-a-half miles further south, in Bromley, right near Beckenham Place Park. As we drove up that first time, I saw it was a beautiful area: there was a glade up the road, a nice shopping centre, and little well-kept family homes across the street on Calmont Road. The training ground itself had four or five pitches in use and clubhouses, with one whole side fenced in by the car park, the other side open to the forest behind us. I’m not going to sugar-coat it. The first morning of my trial was bloody scary. Here I was—an unknown face, some teenager from Australia. Why on earth were these English kids going to give me a chance, trying to take one of their spots? I knew that on the park I could play to the best of my ability, but if the other lads wanted to make me look bad, it was easy enough to do. Just don’t pass me the ball properly or send in a high cross for a header that no one could reach. Trust me, skilled players can make any Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/tim-cahill/legacy-the-autobiography-of-tim-cahill/?lfrom=688855901) на ЛитРес. Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.