I can remember one day, I must have been about 9 years old, when my Dad wanted to have a serious conversation with me. He accused me of not having the right fighting spirit in my games; furthermore he had never seen me making a sliding tackle. I had to agree with my Dad about the last fact, I actually I didn’t know how and when I had to do a sliding tackle.
My Dad is a former professional Football player and has made a great career; he played for Tavria Simferopol, CSKA Moscow and Lokomotiv Moscow. He even counts as one of the top 10 players of the club’s history of Tavria Simferopol and was World Champion with Lokomotiv Moscow in the World Cup of Locomotive teams. (This championship doesn’t exist anymore). One of his greatest strength was his endless fighting spirit with full body use; he could slide tackle like no other. To date he tells me with pride that there has been a newspaper article with the heading: Prychynenko made more tackles in 90 minutes than the whole team together.
The secret of his most valuable strength, a master can barely hide from his apprentice; and certainly not hide from his son. It was winter and we went out in the snow on the road and my Dad played the ball forward, and shouted, “Get the ball “. I had to have the ball before it touched the curb. I ran and accelerated, but I could never manage to catch the ball the way I done it. So I realized that I had to make myself as long as possible and slide. After my Dad had demonstrated it to me, I was inspired by the execution and determined to do the same. You know already what happens when I set myself a goal. On this day I performed my first sliding tackle. That making a sliding tackle has become one of my favorite elements, it’s hard to hide. But all beginnings are difficult.
Of course I tried using slide tackles during the game, however, with limited success, as I was always afraid of hurting myself.
There are 2 types of pain, one that hurts you and one that changes you.
My dad noticed that I was afraid and he didn’t want to leave it to it, so one nice Spring day he took me out on the streets to practice the tackling again. I replied in astonishment: „But Dad, the snow has already melted.“ But everything he had to say was, „Put on a pair of shorts.“ So I learned doing a sliding tackle on bare asphalt. Of course it hurt and of course I had tears of pain in my eyes. I always came close to quitting, but I never did it. Not because of the fear to disappoint my Dad, but the fear of quitting and failure.
This resulted in another rule: Pain is temporary but quitting last forever.
So it’s not a surprise that I am never afraid of any situation and throw myself into tackles without any fear of pain. Much to the regret of my opponents.
denisprychynenko 