Unbeatable Mind

CHAPTER 1

YOUNGEST SON RISING

The origin: strength of the youngest

If I am to talk about resilience, I must start with my childhood in a city called Nagasaki where I was born, on the island of Kyushu located about 600 miles south-west of Tokyo. That is because one of the resilient traits I was born with is the ‘strength of the youngest’. I can hear some people saying, ‘What?’ and I certainly understand that there is no such definition for the word ‘resilience’ in any available dictionaries. But believe me, ‘strength of the youngest’ is a definition to be found in the dictionary of Maya Yoshida.

I started playing football for fun just before I was enrolled at a Japanese elementary school (Year 1 to Year 7 in the UK). I was the youngest of three brothers in my family and started playing in a kickabout with my two brothers and their friends. The J.League (Japan Professional Football League) started when I was around five years old, and was initially just a single division – although it has since grown to have three tiers. My brothers, who were already in their impressionable early teens by then, totally immersed themselves in the ‘soccer boom’ sweeping through the country, triggered by the creation of the much-anticipated domestic professional league.

All my brothers did whenever they had free time was play football. It was football during the lunch break, football after school and football at the weekend. Naturally, that meant it was the same for their youngest brother. It was football day in, day out for me, too. In my mind, having fun meant kicking a ball with them.

The city of Nagasaki back then didn’t have a local club in the J.League, so I didn’t really have a chance to watch a professional football game at a stadium. My sole live experience was when Verdy Kawasaki (now called Tokyo Verdy 1969) came to a town called Isahaya located in the middle of Nagasaki Prefecture for a game. If my memory serves me right, it was a game in the Emperor’s Cup (similar to the FA Cup here in England), not a league game, but I still remember the excitement I felt in the stand on that day, watching a professional football game right in front of me for the first time in my life.

I didn’t follow any particular club or players when I was a kid. I was more a big fan of football itself, especially playing the game. In most parts of Japan baseball is the number one professional sport. However, it wasn’t because football was particularly popular in Kyushu that I was drawn to the game. There were kids playing baseball, too, in my neighbourhood.

Having said that, maybe it was significant that there wasn’t a baseball team in my elementary school, but there was a football team. Hmmm, I guess I was fortunate to be born in a football-friendly environment. Anyway, what I wanted to say was that football was around me for as long as I can remember and playing football was just a natural thing for me to do to have fun as a kid.

However, there was one problem. The lads I always enjoyed a kickabout with were my brothers and their friends. I’m seven years younger than my oldest brother and six years younger than the other one. It meant that, even though I was big for an elementary-school boy, there was no way for me to compete physically with them when they were already going to junior high school (Year 8 to Year 10).

I was always the tallest among my classmates. I was 5’ 6” when I was 12, about six inches taller than the national average for that age. I remember also that I shot up to a little over 5’ 10” in the following 12 months. But I must have been only just above four foot tall when I started playing football and I could easily be brushed aside by my brothers and their friends, who were nearly a foot taller than me. So it was only natural for me to try to outsmart the boys who were physically stronger than I was, and try to play clever in order to compete with the much bigger lads. This way of thinking was always with me from the very earliest stage of my development as a footballer.

I was always good with the ball, too, whether it was kicking or controlling it. Yes, the youngest son of the Yoshida family has always had what it takes to be a ‘player’, although he was destined to be a defender. Thankfully, my brothers didn’t really come charging at me, their little brother, at full tilt when I was on the ball. That allowed me a bit of freedom on the playground to express myself, trying to beat an opponent who was bigger than me by being clever or technical, and the fact I could show off my skills made me fall in love with football even more. Maybe that’s why if I have to name one boyhood hero of mine, it would be Dragan Stojković, also known by his nickname ‘Piksi’, who delighted the J.League crowds while I was growing up with his incredible skills in an attacking midfield role at Nagoya Grampus Eight.

Later in my development, when I started watching games from a defender’s point of view, Rio Ferdinand became one of the players that I most admired. The former Manchester United defender had much more success in his football career than his brother Anton, who is seven years younger than him. Among the former Man United defenders, there were the Neville brothers, too. Again, the achievements of older brother Gary overshadow those of the younger brother Phil, in terms of the number of trophies and medals won. But I, for one, believe that a ‘football career favours the youngest’, if such a proverb exists.

I say this because if you are the youngest brother or sister, you tend to play football with someone older, such as your siblings or their friends. That makes you aware of your particular weakness right from the start, whether it is a smaller physique or slower pace, and as a result you sometimes have to endure pain and frustration. But those experiences will toughen you up both physically and mentally, and also can lead you to compensate for your shortcomings in order to beat or stop your opponent, who is stronger or better in some departments. Therefore the youngest, in the end, has more chance to improve as a footballer and surpass his or her elders, who might have found it easy to get the better of someone younger or smaller, without having to make any extra effort, when they were young. That’s what I think, anyway.

I didn’t know it until I started writing this book, but John Terry, the former Chelsea centre-back, is an example of my belief – the younger of two brothers turned out to be more successful as a footballer. I don’t really know him personally, but from purely a centre-back’s point of view it is not bad, I think, to follow the same pattern as him, a defender whom I looked up to, together with the likes of Ferdinand, throughout my development as a footballer.

Eyes of the youngest

The two older brothers of the Yoshida family weren’t born to pursue a career as a professional footballer. Even though, as their brother, I look at them through rose-tinted glasses, I must say they weren’t good enough. My older brother had stopped playing by the time he was 16. The oldest one carried on playing in his high-school years (age 16 to 18) but only as a back-up goalkeeper.

If there was one thing that made me feel, ‘I’m no different to my brothers,’ it was my name, Maya. Even though I was the only one among the football-loving Yoshida brothers to go on to become a professional, I could not avoid the fate of being given a female-sounding name. My oldest brother is named Honami, while the older one is called Mirei. Both names sound feminine to Japanese ears. My dad was desperate for a daughter, I was told, and that may explain the names our parents chose for us.

It’s not as though I didn’t like my name when I was a kid. It was more a case of being annoyed by people so often ridiculing me, saying, ‘You have a girl’s name!’, and especially by repeatedly having to say, ‘I’m not a girl,’ whenever someone called my name for the first time.

For instance, at the beginning of a school year, when a new teacher checked attendance by calling everyone’s name in the class, when it was my turn the call would come, ‘Yoshida Maya-chan?’ (In Japanese, it’s always the surname first, and ‘chan’ is usually added for a girl to make it sound friendly.) When this happened, which was almost every time, I would answer, ‘Yes, I’m here, but I’m a boy.’ It was the same when I went to a hospital or the dentist’s. A nurse would call out, ‘Yoshida Maya-chan,’ and I would reply, ‘I’m not a girl, but it’s me!’ The only good thing that came out of these experiences was that I managed to develop immunity to being teased by people around me from a very young age.

But today I’m glad that I was called Maya. I really want to thank my parents for giving me that name, as it is one that seems easy not only to remember but also to pronounce for a non-Japanese as well.

Here in the United Kingdom, people tend to give a player a nickname with the letter ‘s’ or ‘y’ or ‘ie’ at the end of it, to make it easier to call out during a game, such as ‘Lamps’, ‘Giggsy’ or ‘Stevie’. But I have always been called by my real name, ‘Maya’, including during my time in the Netherlands before my move to Southampton. (Once in a while, a Saints fan would shout ‘Yoshi!’ to get my attention, and I was probably annoyingly slow to react as I’m not used to being called by that name …)

Anyhow, Maya-chan, with a female-sounding name but with a bigger than average body, was a clever elementary-school kid, I must say. I excelled at sports in general and wasn’t too bad academically as well. I wasn’t the smartest in my class but wasn’t one of those who would get scolded by the teacher for their poor grades either. I was very good at dealing with things at school without trying my hardest. It was only after entering junior high school that I changed my attitude, resolving to do my best in whatever I do. Until then I was able to take it easy in most of the things I did at school.

The fact that Maya-chan managed to avoid becoming conceited is pretty much down to my brothers and their friends. Having them around me was like being surrounded by role models. Through my observation of older people around me, I could pick up some of their good habits, thinking, ‘This must be the way to do it,’ or ‘I shall follow his example.’ I became very good at doing precisely that.

Watching them, I sometimes told myself, ‘I shouldn’t do that,’ or ‘I can’t be like that,’ using them as a bad example. People used to call me a precocious brat when I was a kid, and it was true in a way, as I often coolly observed my brothers and their friends from a step or two away. And that I think became the foundation of my ability to look at things objectively from a neutral perspective.

Even from a young age, while watching people around me rather matter-of-factly, I was always thinking in my head, ‘What would I do?’ ‘How can I be like that?’ ‘What should I do if I don’t want to be like that?’ This particular way of looking at things became more and more important and useful as I continued my development as a footballer, especially after I became a professional player, as it turned out.

When I was struggling to get playing time at Southampton, I often said to journalists in the mixed zone, a designated area at a stadium (often near a team coach pick-up point) for the media to get post-match quotes from players, ‘I understand where I am in the team right now. I just need to keep on working hard, doing what I have to do.’ Looking back now, I think I was able to say that because of this inner strength of mine which developed from an early age as the youngest brother, the strength of mind to face up to reality.

My brothers had shown me so much that ensured this precocious brat of their little brother wouldn’t become a cocky king of the hill. They had also made me try many things that seemed impossible for me to accomplish. Applying for the Nagoya Grampus Eight academy was one of those. At first, it was only to remind me of the danger of becoming a big fish in a small pond.

A small fish in a bigger pond

In my elementary-school days I never felt that I’d be beaten in a game at the local level. In fact, I hardly lost an individual battle on the pitch back in those days. I played in the school team at Sako Elementary School (which later became Nanryo FC), not at Nita Elementary School which I was actually going to, because the latter only allowed pupils in the third year or above to be in the team there. Besides, the two schools were located just a stone’s throw away from each other.

Sako wasn’t a school known for its strong football team so we seldom went into a tournament at the prefecture level, let alone the national level. In addition, I wasn’t especially keen to play in an official school match or tournament, as I had no aspiration to be a professional footballer whatsoever while at elementary school and was just playing for fun at that time. There really was a danger of me becoming living proof that the frog in the well knows nothing of the great ocean, a player who was merely happy to be invincible in a local school football world.

Possibly sensing that danger, my oldest brother, who was living by himself in Fukuoka, a city along the north shore of Kyushu island, sent me an application form for a youth academy trial when I was in my last year at elementary school, thinking I would need a tougher challenge to broaden my horizons.