I was five or six when I started playing football. I didn’t have a lot of choices in the village where I lived - there were just three kinds of sports. One was handball and the other was gymnastics, so the chance was very high that I start to play football.
I was really bad. I remember my first game we lost 24-0 and my father said it would be better if I try another sport. In Germany, every boy starts to play soccer. Maybe that is the reason why I stuck at it.
I was 10 and I played with kids that were two years older in my village’s club.