 I was just like a man on
a mission since I was six.
I think everybody's born with a talent.
It's about you to discover
what your talent is
and then try to master it.
And for me it was scoring.
I just knew, okay, I'm a scorer.
I can shoot with my left and my right
and with my head when I
was like eight or nine.
That was, for me, it was like just finding
a way how to master it,
how to score in different type of ways.
I mean, that's what got me here.
I never did like the running part
because I'm not a good
long distance runner.
I'm more like a sprinter,
but I would just go take a ball
and I would go to the soccer pitch
that was two miles away from my house.
I would walk there with three
or four balls in my hands.
And then shoot. All day.
Shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot.
Try to score as much as I can.
So basically as soon
as we started training camp I
cut off all my social media.
Also my phone, I had another phone.
People couldn't really
get in touch with me.
You start reading books
or watching Netflix.
That was really my
thing, watching Netflix,
reading books, playing Xbox.
I watched "How to Get Away with Murder."
Playing cards with my teammates,
going to the gym a bit more.
Four weeks, you just need to prepare
to try to be in maximum shape.
When I was five there was
the World Cup 98 going on.
In Belgium at the time,
we could always start
soccer from six years old.
So, basically what my dad did,
he recorded all the goals that were scored
and he would play the
videos every other day.
And I would watch it with my brother over
and over and over again.
At one point you start memorizing
the actions and the goals.
So, basically I would watch
Ronaldo the Brazilian for years
and then when I was six I
played for my first team
which was called Ropel Boom. It's
a team in the neighborhood
where I grew up.
Fairly quickly I realized
that my family was in poverty
because obviously I
saw my mom mixing water
with milk one day for breakfast.
Then when you start realizing that,
you try to find a way how to
to become successful but
at a really fast age.
Because, with soccer I
knew that I was fairly good
and I could score easily.
I thought like, when I was
six I said to my mom listen,
this is gonna be it, this
is how we're gonna make it.
At 16 you can play
and then everything's
gonna start from there.
Even though our financial
situation didn't improve
I still kept the same hunger inside
because I didn't want those
situations to happen ever again.
Sometimes you will go
through humiliating moments
but I would say sometimes when
you go through those times,
it makes you stronger at the other end.
It was a negative but it
ended up as a positive.
My dad was not the type of guy being
on the sidelines screaming at the refs
and stuff like that.
My dad would tell me
when I would play well.
My dad would tell me
when it wasn't that well
but he would always try to add a positive
so I could improve on the next game.
It was always about positive coaching.
Always being positive and stuff like that,
that's what really molded me.
The stuff I can do now for my family
and for my country back
in Africa, it's amazing.
That's for me the best thing.
Helping my family out, that
was the number one thing.
Everybody's good now. I can - also if,
if I have kids in the
future they will grow up
in better circumstances than I did.
I'm the type of guy
that I love the game and
I love whatever that comes with it,
but it's not gonna bother
my sleep or anything.
Because I know there are stuff in life
that are really much more worse than that.
