A Quote by Diego Forlan

Even as a kid, I'd kick a tennis ball against a wall with both feet for hours. That was one way to become two-footed. — © Diego Forlan
Even as a kid, I'd kick a tennis ball against a wall with both feet for hours. That was one way to become two-footed.
I was the kid who always liked to take the ball down to the school even in my free time, kick it against the wall, juggle it in the front yard and so it was kind of a perpetual state of playing soccer for me.
If you bounce a tennis ball against a wall it will come back to you the same way every time. But if you shift the wall a few degrees it will come back another way.
In the 1980s when I was growing up in the Berkshire town of Maidenhead I was heavily into tennis. It was the era of Borg and McEnroe. I used to spend hours hitting balls against a wall, imagining I was beating them both.
It's no accident, I think, that tennis uses the language of life. Advantage, service, fault, break, love, the basic elements of tennis are those of everyday existence, because every match is a life in miniature. Even the structure of tennis, the way the pieces fit inside one another like Russian nesting dolls, mimics the structure of our days. Points become games become sets become tournaments, and it's all so tightly connected that any point can become the turning point. It reminds me of the way seconds become minutes become hours, and any hour can be our finest. Or darkest. It's our choice.
I just kick the ball against the cement wall and work on my touches and juggling.
I spent hours from 11 until 16 with Tottenham in the gym playing the ball against the wall. We played against the wall for an hour before we would have a match. Left foot. Right foot. In the square. In the circle. Above the line, below it. Chest control. Thigh control. Volley sideways.
There is a special sensation in getting good wood on the ball and driving a double down the left-field line as the crowd in the ballpark rises to its feet and cheers. But, I also remember how much fun I had as a skinny barefoot kid hitting a tennis ball with a broomstick on a quiet, dusty street in Panama.
I feel as though I stand at the foot of an infinitely high staircase, down which some exuberant spirit is flinging tennis ball after tennis ball, eternally, and the one thing I want in the world is a tennis ball.
I reached this level by sheer dint of hard work, toiling away at scores of tricks and experiments. I used to play with the ball from dawn till dusk and just kept practising. If I wasn't playing matches, it was trying out one on one or two against two with a tennis ball. Then I used to try aiming at certain targets. That's the only way to learn. And if I missed the target, I kept trying until I scored
Tennis is not always that accessible but I sometimes think badminton is harder - tennis you can always play against the wall but badminton is tough to even play outdoors with the wind.
You can kick a ball into the net, throw a basketball into the net. Tennis is complicated. It'll make a lot of great athletes run the other way because they can't be successful initially.
Chemistry is really about two people who like to act together, I think. It's like tennis in the most cliched way. It's like if you hit the ball, they hit the ball back, and they don't hit it into the stands, and they don't put the ball in their pocket and walk off - and they don't argue with the umpire, you know?
At the age of five or six I just used to kick the ball with both feet. I wasn't very good to start with but I practised and practised. Once I finally got it, it was an unbelievable sensation. It was then that I realised that if you work at something, it pays off.
I don't pay attention to which foot I'm developing. I just train normally and use both feet. I'd say I'm right-footed.
The best player I ever played against was Paolo Maldini. We [Arsenal] played against Milan in the European Supercup [in 1995]. Maldini marked me and I didn't even get a kick of the ball all game. He was just unbelievable.
I think I work in two worlds. I'll always try to kick through a wall. I did that when I was younger and I still have my way of doing that.
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