I was wondering that myself until it was explained to me.

I love soccer but I also love to play other ball games like basketball, tennis and even cricket; and i’m pretty good at them too. But after soccer, I really, really love basketball and thought that playing basketball might interfere with my soccer training.

I also thought that I might get distracted from achieving my dream of becoming an Asian soccer star and playing professional soccer. But here’s the really cool thing.

Basketball helps with my soccer. I found out that if you keep doing the same training day after day your body gets used to it and after a while you don’t get much benefit. So you have to push your body further and further.

Playing other sports works your body in different ways and you get the benefits of that.  Basketball requires speed, agility,  jumping and turning ability; so does playing soccer.

So basically you’re getting a great fun workout that helps your soccer while playing other sports.

I’ve also started playing squash which is also great for building stamina, speed, agility and movement.

What i’m saying is not giving up on other sports I enjoy, because they are helping in my soccer training. I don’t want to just work, work and work because i’ll end up hating it.

Keeping the fun in sport is very important.

That’s what’s being drummed into me at the moment.

I’ve been working hard on my fitness, awareness, agility and pace. But working on developing my soccer skills is what I enjoy the most.

I can spend hours in the garden working with the ball, keeping it as close as possible to my feet with balance while perfecting my Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Rivaldo and Cruyff.

These are all tricks that are named after the great players who mastered and used them to brilliant effect. If I can master just a couple of these tricks and bring them to my match play, i’ll have everything in place to reach my goal of playing professional soccer.

So, really I don’t mind my coach pushing me to spend time mastering these soccer skills on top of my training schedule. I don’t mind spending hours practising kick-ups, so I have better control of the ball. I don’t mind because without this commitment, I won’t reach my goal.

Above all, I don’t mind because I love playing soccer and want to make sure I have every chance to play professionally.