A long journey back to the beautiful game - part I
This is a story about a young man who is pursuing the dream to get back playing the game he loves.
Meet Gianluca Deodato - a French-born footballer who has suffered so many serious injuries already, starting in 2008, when he was 14 years old. He dislocated his left knee cap and was out 6 months after the operation. That was his first taste of rehabilitation, and the trials and tribulations that come with it. He returned to football in 2009 but had recurrences of instability and pain over the next two years; a surgeon even recommended that young Gianluca should quit football forever, at 15 - not take a break and get stronger…but quit.
That word “quit” has never been in Gianluca’s vocabulary. You will not find many people with as robust and resilient a mindset as this guy. Mental fortitude, toughness, determination, persistence, grit - these are words that mirror this man’s personality.
Gianluca kept playing football over the next few years in his later teens but by 18 had twisted and strained that left knee a few more times. There’s only so much pressure a joint can take. He went under the knife again, and this op was much more extensive - more complications would follow, such as pain, muscle atrophy, altered movement patterns, stiffness, etc.
A sutured left knee post-op
Gianluca now had to learn to move again, and differently; his biomechanics and functional strength were forever altered. The attitude that served him well when he was 15-16…getting up early and strength training, staying after school and working on his core stability and fitness…he would need that, and much more now.
The late Kobe Bryant once said that “what counts is the journey, not the destination”; this purposeful personal journey back to the game with the spherical ball…the game of Pele, Cristiano Ronaldo and Leo Messi…of tiki-taka, large yellow walls in Dortmund, offsides, VAR and Old Trafford…it will come. I believe it. Do you?
“Have no regrets. It doesn’t matter to make it or not as long as you try 100%”
a young and happy footballer, born in Clichy, France…now living in London