What The Odyssey Taught Me About Soccer

Hello everyone, Hector here…

This past Saturday, I was finally able to watch The Odyssey with my girlfriend, and it instantly became one of my favorite movies…

For those who don't know, The Odyssey is the story of Odysseus, a great warrior who spends 10 years trying to get back home after the Trojan War.

Every single time he gets close to home…something else goes wrong. Monsters. Storms. Gods working against him. A crew that makes the worst decisions at the worst possible moment…

And the whole time I'm watching, I kept thinking:

“This is exactly what we try to teach in MAGIS”

You might be thinking: why in the world is a soccer guy talking about an ancient Greek story?

Well…because it matters.

Here's the thing nobody talks about:

Odysseus was one of the greatest warriors in all of Greece…and he was still completely lost for a decade.

Not a bad week. Not a rough season. A decade.

And here's what I see all the time in youth soccer: a player trains for 6 months, doesn't make the A team, and the whole family starts questioning everything. Starts thinking about quitting. Starts wondering if it's "worth it."

I get it. I really do.

When I was 7 years old, I didn't make the A team at my school in Caracas. I remember that day like it was yesterday. My dad took me aside afterward, and he didn't make me any promises. He just said:

"Keep going."

That was it.

Two words.

And I did. I showed up the next day. And the day after that. My dad would wake up every Saturday morning at 6am to take me to train… and he didn't know a single thing about soccer. But he showed up.

And eventually, I made the A team. Then I made Caracas FC, the best club in Venezuela. Then the national team. Then the University of Memphis.

But it took YEARS. And it was not linear. And there were setbacks I don't always talk about…

The path looked nothing like what I imagined when I was 7 years old on that field in Caracas.

But that is exactly the point.

We live in a world that wants everything right now. We want the starting spot after one month of training. We want to go from the B team to the A team in one tryout cycle. We want the results before we've put in the time.

And when it doesn't happen fast enough… we start to doubt.

But here's what The Odyssey reminded me:

The journey IS the destination.

Odysseus didn't become the man he was because of what happened after he got home. He became that man because of the 10 years of storms and monsters and setbacks that almost broke him.

The player who becomes great at 17 started failing at 9.

The player who earns the starting spot at 15 was the last pick at 11.

The player who gets the college scholarship at 18 was told "you're not good enough" at 13.

I've seen it over and over again, right here in Memphis.

To you, the parent reading this, I know it's hard to watch your kid struggle. I know it hurts when they don't get the recognition you think they deserve. But I promise you: the journey they are on right now, even the hard parts of it…especially the hard parts of it…is shaping them into something greater than a soccer player.

It is shaping them into a person.

And to you, the player, I know how it feels to be in that spot where you question everything. Where you wonder if it's going to happen for you. I've been there. I know that feeling.

But your time will come.

Keep going.

Do the work. Do more than others.

And trust the journey…even on the days it doesn't make sense.

Odysseus didn't know how the story was going to end either. He just kept moving.

Always More,

Hector