Autobilography of Zlatan Ibrahimovic

As the Goodmans pulled up to the driveway of the lodge snow started falling. They didn’t get much snow in North Carolina so they stared admiringly at the glistening

After quitting, I focused solely on football. I loved being apart of the team. The thought of playing on a field just like The New England Patriots always ran through my head. I’ve always dreamed about being in the NFL since I was 4. (my first year in The Little Knights). Knowingly by now, the NFL is a rare career to achieve.

Snow everyday until Spring came along. I knew Mr. Snow was eventually going to melt. This made me sad but we sure did have fun while it lasted.

The moment I quit it seemed as the right thing to do. At the point I had torn my ACL and all my friends were quitting as well. My biggest thing at the time was I did not think I could get back into the hang of it. My coaches were always

I hated to go to practice when I started playing, I was small, I wasn’t athletic, and didn’t really knew anything about football at the age of six. The whole time there I hated how I was one of the last ones to finish a lap, one of the weakest tacklers, and not much talent. But after enduring those harsh practices after weeks of knowing that information I didn’t quit. I think I just wanted

The wind outside howled like a hungry wolf. The falling snow covered everything. It may have been daytime but the blizzard kept the sun from shining even just a little bit, it was just about black.

Little did I know that the path I was on would change my life forever. I had always had a passion for sports before I began to play football. I had played sports all through elementary school but once I reached junior high I just slowly got away from playing. I just had no desire to play anymore, I did not

I realized that just because I wasn’t playing as much didn't mean I wasn't good enough, it meant I wasn't working hard enough. This failure made me realize it was no longer good enough to be just average. This failure caused me to work harder, be stronger, and to have more confident.I did extra workouts, read books on self confidence, and prayed every night. I never failed to thank God for guiding me everyday. I carry the following with me everyday. After I started doing extra work and believing in myself, I began playing more. Nothing felt more rewarding than knowing I had overcome a failure that once felt like it was going to break me. Not only did I grow as a soccer player, but I grew as a person,

I never predicted this beautiful trip ending up as a nightmare in my existence. I drove for approximately 40 minutes and my partner shared the driving for an additional 40 minutes. We were driving my friend mom’s

My heart was no longer in football after 5 years of playing the sport, I only loved it for 3 years out of the 5. How I feel in love, I still remember pee wee and middle school football like it was yesterday. The sound of the helmets cracking on one another, the sweat dripping down my face and body, and the sound of my teammates breathing heavy after running. These were the years where you were excited to go to practice, lift and play Thursdays, but with everything good there is always a bad. High school football changed the way felt towards football. I began to hate the sport that I once loved and wanted to do for a living, if I was given the opportunity. The nonstop hitting and hitting and hitting, the pressure on the knees every time you would block someone, and practices that last for 3-4 hours long every day after school, in 90-100 degrees, and with 20 pounds of pads on. I thought was not worth saying I play for the Devine Warhorses. High school football felt like a job that you are not getting paid to do, having to wake up early to go watch film on the team you’re playing that week, and having to go in for lunch sometimes. When I played high school football I had no social life outside of the football team and had no time to work on what really matters… school. Strong and talented can only get you so far in a sport without being truly in love with it. When your burned out, not having any fun, and dreading for the season to come to an end,

One big adventure we had was in the cold and mountainous state of Colorado. During the summer of last year my whole family went west to Colorado to visit my aunts, uncles, and cousins who live in Colorado and California. When out in Colorado we had lots of fun and did a lot of exciting things together. The first few days we did a lot of different things from running up the Red Rock Theater to going down the rough Alpine slides. “ Man my legs feel like jello,” I cried when we left the Theater. Later in day we all drove over to my uncle’s house to help set up for a graduation party. “ Man how many men does it take to fix a tent?” jokingly questioned my mom. After setting everything up for the party we all decided to go up to Red Rock and the Alpine Slides again because not everybody got to go up the first day. When 3:30 rolled around the party got started and everyone was playing corn hole and enjoying the nice, beautiful Colorado weather. When night rolled around my uncle asked confidently, “ Does anybody want to go down and play me ping pong?” I was the daredevil to face him first and it didn’t turn out as I planned it would. After playing ping pong and partying the night before everybody was bushed, but still we found lots of other things to do. In Golden, Colorado, we explored the Coors Brewer Company and in Canon City, Colorado, the deep and interesting Royal Gorge was explored. At the end of the week

I have been playing soccer since the inexperienced age of three years. As a little kid, I was number one on my team. I would score an unbelievable amount of six goals a game! As of today, I am not the greatest on my team, but I still love to play. Because soccer is my passion, breaking my ankle was so challenging for me. I had to bypass doing what I enjoy most.

Football is a game of passion, a time when nothing else matters and the only thing that matters is going out there having fun and fighting for the guy next to you. Football has always been something that I loved and had a wild passion for. I’ve made friendships and memories to last a life time and I can always be grateful that football did that for me. Now of course I’ve had some bad memories during football as well, I remember walking out of the film room on the last day of spring ball and having Coach Antle grab me and say “Gage, I think I want to try you at a new position, I want to put you at defensive end. We need you more there and we think you can really excel there.” I remember being so furious, I had played linebacker ever since I could remember and now the last day of spring ball my senior year everything was about to change.

Early that morning we woke up, got ready, and started our adventure. The long, boring drive was over 2 hours, but the fun finally started when we arrived. With the weather being a slight drizzle all day there were not that many people there. We got on the rides with almost no wait time. The very first roller coaster that we were going to go on broke down as we were waiting in line. Being impatient as I am, we got out of line, but of course as soon as we did the ride was fixed.

I had grown to know the coaches, my footwork had improved leaps and bounds compared to when I came into the program, and yet still I was nervous. I knew too many people were trying out for my position, one of us was going to be cut, and with two returning seniors there was two spots for three of us. Unfortunately, I wasn’t the one to pick. Maybe it was my size, my speed, my control of the ball, whatever it was, it just wasn’t good enough and on the last day of try outs, myself and three others were called over to have the news broken to us that there just wasn’t enough positions open. I was crushed.