¡Hala Madrid!

i grew up with football and ballet. you can guess which one of these two sports affected me more. i didn't get much support for being who i wanted to be.

i wanted to play football all day but i was a girl and school was always more important. my grades were more important. my mom never believed i could make something out of football so it was a risk she wasn't ready to take. so, when i started school, she made me stop playing the game that was making me so happy. i started when i was only four and stopped in the winter when i was turning seven.

as i got older, i got more responsible. my dad somehow talked my mom into letting me attend football practices again. i was in 5th grade then and my biggest idols were iker casillas and luka modrić. my coach would sometimes tell my dad that i was dancing with the ball. i was literally playing games out there on the field. once he put me to play with the boys, since their team was stronger, and i did as good as they did, even better than some of them. i loved being a centre back/centre midfielder, my idols here were mostly sergio ramos, dejan lovren, ivan rakitić and luka modrić. (i am obviously a real madrid fan from croatia)

iker casillas is somehow the love of my life. i did try being a goal keeper a few times (never worked out). but he was my inspiration since i was five or six, it's hard to explain why. everything about him made me believe i can do it even when everyone else was telling me i couldn't. my coach was sure i could make a great footballer one day if i keep fighting my way to the top. he made me believe i had everything that's needed to become someone like alex morgan. except he always used to tell me not to try to become like someone but to try to become the best version of myself. a person other kids will want to become like.

now im in highschool, 10th grade. i dont play football anymore because my parents dont let me play it. they think its distracting me. ever since they took it away from me im struggling with anxiety and ive developed some kind of depression.

but something i always look back to is my coach saying that im dancing with the ball. dance is art. and with enough effort, you can turn football into art. thats why i love it so much. you can spend 87 minutes running around but in the end, the minutes that matter the most are those last three minutes. football had shown us how every second matters, how the smallest ones can be the biggest ones, it showed us that enemies can be friends for 90 minutes, it made us cry both sad and happy tears, it made us look up to someone. it had shown us how the smallest mistake can result in a defeat and how the smallest bit of luck can turn the tables within seconds.

when my coach once told me: "youre somehow not even playing football, youre living it" i didnt understand. i understood it only when it was taken away from me. a year after he told me that little thing i will remember for life, hans zimmer's "living football" wrapped the world cup 2018 in its hands, lead croatia to the finals and made me one of the happiest people alive. its kinda creepy how he pieces had been put together, i mean the 'living football' thing. during halftimes i'd go out, even when it was raining and when we were losing against france in the finals, and i would just dance ballet with the football. i would dance with the ball.