The smell of freshly cut grass on a Saturday morning still gets me, every single time. It’s a scent that bypasses my brain entirely and goes straight to some deep, dusty corner of my memory, pulling up images of muddy boots, the tight grip of shin guards, and that unique, hollow thud of a ball connecting perfectly with a laced-up leather boot. I stood on the sidelines of my nephew’s youth league game last weekend, coffee in hand, watching a swarm of eight-year-olds chase a ball with chaotic joy. And it hit me, a quiet but persistent ache: I used to play football. Not just kick a ball around, but really play. With passion, with sore muscles on Sunday mornings, with a specific spot on the wall I’d use for target practice until my mother yelled about the scuff marks. That person felt like a stranger now, someone from another life. The title of this piece came to me right then, a question and a promise to myself: I Used to Play Football: How to Rediscover Your Passion for the Game.
My own "retirement" wasn’t dramatic. There was no final match, no hanging up of the boots in a ceremony. It was a slow fade, the kind life orchestrates so well. A demanding new job, a move to a new city where I didn’t know anyone, a nagging ankle injury that became a convenient excuse. The weekly pickup game got skipped once, then twice, then it was just something I used to do. The ball deflated in the garage. The passion didn’t vanish in a puff of smoke; it just… evaporated. And for years, I told myself it was fine. It’s just a game, right? Adult things are more important. But standing there on that sideline, feeling that visceral pull, I knew I’d been lying to myself. I missed the simplicity of it. The uncomplicated objective: move the ball, work with your teammates, score. A world contained within painted white lines for 90 minutes.
That’s when I remembered something a coach of mine said, years ago, after a brutal, rainy-season loss. We were dejected, soaked to the bone and miserable. He gathered us and said, in a mix of languages that somehow made it more potent: "Sabi ko nga sa mga players namin na sana, yun yung palaging gawin nilang motivation na one week lang kayong nagpahinga, ang laki ng sinacrifice niyo, tuloy-tuloy yung training at hard work niyo." He was telling us, "I always tell our players, I hope that’s what you always use as motivation, that you only rested for one week, you sacrificed so much, so let your training and hard work continue." Back then, I heard it as a pep talk about not getting lazy. Now, as an adult who had let a "one week" break stretch into a decade, I heard it differently. It wasn’t about guilt; it was about honoring the investment. The sacrifice wasn’t just the time, but the love we’d poured into it. Letting it lie fallow felt like a betrayal of that younger version of myself who would have done anything for another minute on the pitch.
So, I decided to start. Not with a grand plan to join a competitive league, but with something small and almost embarrassingly simple. I bought a new ball. Just a basic one. I drove to an empty park on a Tuesday evening, the light turning that long, golden color. For the first ten minutes, I just stood there, feeling silly. Then I dropped the ball and took a touch. It was clumsy. My feet felt like blocks of wood. My coordination was off by about 40%, I’d estimate. But I kept going. Pass against the wall. Dribble around an imaginary defender—a particularly menacing dandelion. The rhythm started to return, not in my skills, which were frankly awful, but in the feeling. The focus required to control the ball pushed every other thought out of my head. The worry about a work deadline, the mental grocery list, the noise of the week… it all just faded into the background, replaced by the singular task of making the ball obey. It was a form of meditation with grass stains.
I won’t lie and say it was an instant re-awakening. My calves screamed for two days. I was embarrassingly out of breath after maybe 15 minutes of light jogging and passing. The data isn’t pretty: my first session consisted of about 200 touches, with a completion rate on passes to my chosen tree-target of a pathetic 65%. But the number didn’t matter. What mattered was the feeling afterwards. That pleasant, whole-body tiredness I hadn’t felt in years. The quiet satisfaction of having done something purely for the joy of it. I’ve since found a casual, over-30s Sunday morning group. The pace is slower, the tackles are… discussed rather than executed, and the post-game talk is more about knee braces than tactics. But it’s football. The laughter after a comically bad miss is just as genuine as the cheer for a scrappy goal. The connection, the shared purpose, it’s all still there.
Rediscovering my passion for football wasn’t about recapturing my 18-year-old self’s speed or skill—that ship has sailed, probably by about 3 or 4 knots per hour. It was about reclaiming the feeling the game gave me. The discipline, the camaraderie, the pure, physical poetry of a game played for love. That old coach’s words ring true now more than ever. The sacrifice my younger self made—the early mornings, the bruises, the dedication—deserves more than to be a forgotten footnote. It deserves to be a foundation. The passion isn’t a flame that needs to roar back to life; it’s an ember that was always there, just waiting for a little oxygen. For me, that oxygen was the simple act of showing up in a quiet park with a ball and no expectations. The game remembers you, even when you forget it. You just have to be willing to take the first, clumsy touch.