Once Upon A Time... (in Football)

inspired by dart adam's originator series, and helped by my lack of originality, i'm just gonna blog about early influences that resulted in me getting hooked on football (thats soccer, yanks), music, and computers/games. my 3 passions.

part uno: football. two people are responsible for this: my pops, and maradona. i can't remember what age i was when i began to understand the purpose of a box with bright flickering images which they called a TV (maybe 3), but every weekend i was intrigued at why my dad would spend the whole day staring at that box supposedly watching some dudes kicking some ball around. that was football and the coolest part was of course was the scream "GOAL!" and the happy and sometimes sad faces after. by fate i was hooked. my pops had a freaking library of VHS tapes filled up with complete world cup matches from beyond my time and i was literally forced to watch them cos i liked bright lights and that TV stole the show. my dad explained the rules of the game and i was in.
and then there was diego. first, a fact and a shame: i actually started supporting argentina before my own country, nigeria. at age 5, i could name every player in the '86 world cup argentine team meanwhile i was often mistaking our flying eagles for our green eagles (blame the miracle of dammam for that). shameful i know.

every budding kid footballer always has a hero to look up to. at that time, maradona was the best in the world so naturally he was my hero. it's a known fact that the guy was a f**king genius so i won't bore you. he was truly an "i" in a "team". argentina's confirmation as world football superpowers and napoli's rise from mediocrity are obvious testaments to that. during my years under-10, when i got the chance, i'd watch my dad's argentina world cup tapes, watching all of maradona's moves carefully and then practice them when/where i could: in school, on the streets (my legs are infested with scars), in the house (living room/bedroom regularly smashing light bulbs, picture frames, anything breakable).
maradona got me playing and i learned my early moves from him. my best footballer yet, though, is zidane. from age 15, i improved immensely and understood the game better by just watching zidane. i so badly wanted to be a professional footballer because of that dude. when he joined juve in '96 which had only just become my favorite team, i realised i was a juventino for life. but hey this post is supposed to about originators, and it's getting long, and i'm tired, so i'll stop. you get the point.
oh BTW, i kick ass on winning eleven aka pro evo. though i don't play as much as i used to, niggys know, i'm a legend! 1997 - 2004 i was unfukwitable!