Joe Gomez: My Grassroots Story

My first memories of playing are from when I was about four, just playing at a local facility in Catford. I just went down one Saturday, you could pay a pound and go in the cage.

 So that was where I started playing and then I joined a Sunday League team. It was my dad’s team first, called Marvels Lane and then I went to play for Lewisham Youth Green and then to Ten-Em-Bee.

There was a guy called Byron at Ten-Em-Bee, who would always go out of his way to help the kids. 

I think people like that often don’t get the credit they deserve. Not just for being a coach, but almost being like a second coach. 

It was all with my mates to start with, a couple of them went to my primary school and it was just pure fun. We used to do a lot of training with the Futsal ball.

You just can’t emulate that pure fun that you get from grassroots football, being able to play freely with your friends.

Later on, I had the opportunity to go to either Millwall or Charlton, and my parents chose Charlton. At first, I didn’t get in so I was at their development centre in Deptford and training there for a while before I went back in for a trial and got my chance.

It didn’t seem long before I was involved in the first team and I remember it seemed weird, getting the opportunity to play so young, especially because it was my childhood team.

I’d go to the games with my friends and then suddenly, you’re on that stage. It was nice and it felt like I was playing for the biggest team in the world at the time.

It’s all about opportunity and I do think sometimes it’s about being lucky and getting a chance so young that others might not.

But I just enjoyed that phase, playing first-team games at Charlton and I learned a lot. The Championship is a tough league, it’s relentless and for that season I just took so much on board in being able to adapt to men’s football and playing for points which mean something.

I love playing for England too, I always have done since my first games with the MU16s. I’d say winning the U17 EUROs with England in 2014 is definitely still up there as one of the best moments of my career. Winning something is always special and we just really clicked as a group that season.

When we went out there to Malta for the competition, we had a real confidence about ourselves. I remember us being in the hotel with the likes of Germany and Holland, seeing them around and we weren’t intimidated by them, whereas sometimes we might have been in awe.

But we were so confident in ourselves and it was a special time which I’ll always remember.

Even after that summer though, I still didn’t feel settled in how good I might be or an accomplished player at the top level.

You’ve got to get that consistency, you’ve got to continue to push yourself every day and I think I really found that out when I moved to Liverpool as a teenager.

It’s no secret that I’ve had setbacks with injury in the last few years, but I’ve done my best to try and bounce back from them and make things right.

And it’s all behind me now so I just want to keep my head down, stay on top of things and I just want to keep going, keep learning and progressing at the same time.

Sometimes, it’s just out of your hands and the serious injuries I’ve had were really unlucky in a way.

I can’t act like it’s easy either. Maybe it is for some people but for me, it wasn’t anything that I took lightly and I admit that I did struggle at times during my recovery.

When you’re so young, I was 18 at the time and had only just joined Liverpool when I had the first injury, it’s just not in the script.

Any talk of something that threatens your career is so daunting and when it’s your first real injury, it’s something you don’t expect at all.

You grow a lot during times like that. I’d moved to Liverpool by myself, so to get a setback like that wasn’t easy. 

My family were all there for me in the immediate moments and for the surgery, but it was the long road to recovery which I had to face head on, on my own.

It took a lot out of me, but I learnt a lot as well – about my body and about myself. It put a lot of things into perspective for me.

Football can be a bit of a bubble which you can quickly get taken out of, so it makes you realise how lucky you are to be out on the pitch and doing what you do.

It definitely made me more appreciative, not that I wasn’t appreciative before, but more aware that it’s really a blessing to be able to play football for a job every day.

But I’m a strong believer that everything happens for a reason and I’d like to think I’m better for it all and now I’m determined to enjoy it.