A Quote by Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain

I started going training with Southampton, and they were selecting the team for the under-9s. I did a six-week trial and got in. I was quite lucky to play at a good standard from a very young age.
I was so lucky because I started working very young. And my father was very wealthy and I didn't need to work. I did my films. I was very well paid for my age, and I could make choices, decide not to do a film for six months and wait until I'd get the right thing. Which made me quite a coward, you know. It's so easy to say no to stuff, and then, after a while, it's very hard to go back in.
A coach was managing the Newbury team, and he wanted me to play for his local team, and from there, I did it at district level, and then I got picked for Southampton.
I think I was just lucky to be brought up in a very musical family. My two older brothers were, and still are, very musical and very creative, and music was a big part of my life from a very young age, so it is quite natural for me to become involved in music in the way that I did.
Back home, if you get scored on, you're the weak link. When I started getting good, they were like, 'If you're going to play on our team when we go play pick-up, and you start getting scored on, we're not going to let you play anymore.' I started learning how to help other people out with my defense.
I went to Cardiff on trial for six weeks and felt I did really well, but then they turned around and said they weren't going to sign me. It was a bitter pill to swallow because Hereford, where I was playing at the time, were scrapping their youth team, so I didn't have any other options.
I went to the University of Georgia for a year before I left, and then I went to live with Eileen Ford in New York for the modeling agency. I thank god I could do that because all the other kids were getting jobs doing other things, and when I got to New York, I was very blessed. I didn't have to stop and be a waitress. I started making money at a very young age and was just very lucky.
When I first came into international running, most runners did about 60-70 miles or running a week. I guess that is still the standard except for Kenya and Ethiopia. I was doing 150-250 a week and some weeks as high as 350. It was unheard of! But, because I did not have access to what was possible and standard, I had to set my own possibilities and standards. I was just lucky enough to be out of the loop and not know.
My dad was a great athlete. He started golf at a late age. He started me off real young and all of a sudden both of us got to where we were pretty good players. I was this 12-year-old thinking he was going to be the next Tiger Woods and all of a sudden, before you know it, I'm playing in the State Amateur.
I guess I'm lucky in that I started working very young in all three of the mediums. I started in stage first, and then I moved into film, also very young, and when I did 'Taxi,' for instance, it was live in front of an audience but also filmed; that was a fun combination.
Robert Easter Jr. is a tough fighter who I have to take very seriously and I do, and that's why we did a nine-week training camp and got the great sparring, got the right training, the right diet, everything.
I was very fortunate to take piano lessons from a young age, and the only times that we were able to play on Steinways was at our recitals, which were really nerve-wracking. Partly because we got to play on a Steinway.
I work very hard during the week at training, and when I have the chance to play, I want to do everything I can to help the team.
My standard training week, there's a lot of training in there. I have a high-performance coach who manages these spreadsheets of mine, manages my sessions and my loads. It's a very complicated process, and he puts me through about 22 sessions a week.
I was very lucky once I got started with a career. I happened to get some really good parts to play with some really good people to play with.
We're like on a rollercoaster and I don't like that because a sign of a good team is consistency, and consistency is a work ethic and it's about producing that standard, and if you can produce that standard week in, week out, whether you win or lose, that's a different thing.
At age nine, I got a paper route. Sixty-six papers had to be delivered to sixty-six families every day. I also had to collect thirty cents a week from each customer. I owed the paper twenty cents per customer per week, and got to keep the rest. When I didn't collect, the balance came out of my profit. My average income was six dollars a week.
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