The Story So Far

Me, I’m always chilling. That’s the first thing you need to know about me. I’m never doing too much, except on the football pitch.

But honestly, chilling is rewarding. Do you ever sit around your house and you get to that advanced stage of chilling where you start scrolling through your camera roll? But I mean deep in the scroll. Back to the very beginning. I love to do that, because it’s like seeing the movie of your life play in reverse. 

I was actually sitting around the house doing that the other day. When I got to the end, I saw the very first photos I ever took with my first phone. It gave me goosebumps, to be honest. I saw my football journey in one picture. See, I got my phone when I was 8 years old. I wanted one before that, but my mum…. Yeah, she shut it down. She’s got her master’s degree. She’s a very smart woman. She’s not going to let her 8-year-old kid have an iPhone. Not a chance. But then I ended up getting accepted to Chelsea’s youth academy, and that’s when I had my little window to negotiate. We had just moved from Germany to England for my mum to finish her degree, and I was still learning English. I kind of spoke a mix of German and English and “Football.” 

It’s funny actually because one of the first friends I made when I came to England was Levi Colwill. I showed up on the first day of training at Southampton’s academy, and I was speaking 99% German. But you know how football is … it’s the universal language. I walked up to Levi, because I guess he looked nice, and I tried the best I could….

“Na, was geht? Jamal. Hello. Football. I love football. Cool. Football, bro. Jamal.” 

Levi probably thought I was so weird, but we bonded over the game, and I started slowly learning English. You know what’s crazy? We even found out we had the exact same birthday. It was like fate, us becoming boys. We ended up moving to Chelsea together a few months later, and I was going to have to be going back-and-forth from school to training a lot. A little kid in the big city. At that point, my mum broke down and let me get a phone. (She was quick to tap those Parental Restrictions, though. I could basically text and use the camera and that was it.) 

“Text me every hour, Jamal. Every hour.”

That’s when I took my first real picture ever: Levi and Jamal at Chelsea. Two boys with a dream. SNAP.

When we got to Chelsea, it was incredible just to be around all the legends — just to be within 100 meters of them, just to see them across the car park. This was like 2012, so we were seeing Lampard, Drogba, Čech, Terry…. And they’re real. That’s actually Didier Drogba. Like, from FIFA. They were on a completely different side of the facility from us kids, but one day they came to train over on the youth pitch for some reason, and I remember telling Levi, “I’m getting a picture. I’m getting a picture. I don’t care, bro….”

When training was finished, all the players were coming off the pitch, larger than life. And I’ll never forget, I walked up to André Schürrle. I was so shameless. I went straight for the German.

I held up my phone like: Bitte, André? Bitte? Please, sir.

He was so cool about it. He stood there while I took one of those awkward selfies. Remember the selfies in 2012? We had not perfected selfies yet, as a society. 

So I’m holding the camera down so low and I’m smiling like: 

😐

Blurry. Awkward. I didn’t care. That picture was like gold to me. I ended up getting Drogba, Terry, and a bunch of others. It was like Pokémon. “Bro, I got Luiz the other day! I got Hazard!” You’d be showing off your camera roll. My dad actually helped me with JT, I remember. That was a proper one. My dad caught him walking around one random day and said, “Skipper! Can me and my son please have a quick picture?” 

My dad was cheesing taking that one. That was such a special moment for him, because he was the one who instilled the love of football in me. He was at every single one of my matches as a kid, running up and down the sideline with me. If you see a video from back then, it looks like he’s a referee. But he’s just my dad. That’s the Nigerian side of me. He actually used to bring this little white towel with him everywhere and put it in his back pocket, just in case he had to dab off some sweat.

I was going through all those old pictures the other day, and it was an amazing reminder of how far we came from. We spent eight years in England before we came back to Germany. When I was 16, I was just finishing up my GCSEs, and there was a lot of uncertainty in our family. Not about football, but about life. Brexit was about to take effect in the U.K., and my mum was worried about how it could affect her career as an expat working in London. We couldn’t really get clear answers. It was stressful. Right around that time, Bayern Munich offered us the chance to move back home. Or I should say our “first home.” I loved England. I felt part English, if I’m honest. It’s never an easy decision to uproot your life like that, but it really felt like fate. Something about Bayern just felt natural. 

But….. OK, I am not going to lie to you. I could tell the version of the story where I go to Bayern and I got my lederhosen on, and I’m the little German boy coming home, and it’s all perfect. 

But the truth is more complicated. 

A few weeks before we moved to Munich, I broke my jaw. That is a story for another day. All you need to know is that I had to get two plates in my jaw, and the only thing that I could eat for weeks and weeks was soup and lasagna. 

Lasagna, bro. 

Lasagna. 

I can’t even smell it anymore. I can’t even hear the word without getting ill. I ate so much of my mum’s lasagna that I’m traumatized. I ended up losing so much weight, and I wasn’t even a big guy to begin with. So now I’m this Chelsea academy kid who is moving to Bayern, and I’m like 60 kilos, and I can’t even really speak — I can just sort of mumble.

I loved England. I felt part English, if I’m honest. It’s never an easy decision to uproot your life like that, but it really felt like fate.

To set the record straight — I spoke German. (Stop laughing, Leroy. Stop, bro.) OK, I spoke German-ish. We always spoke German at home with my mum and dad. But you know how it is with your family, right? It was more like a casual, slang German. It wasn’t the German you learn in school, with the proper der, die, das. So now I’m showing up speaking rusty German, and my jaw can only open like 15%, and I’m trying to introduce myself to everybody. 

It was crazy.

I’m sure everybody was looking at each other like, “He’s from Chelsea? The skinny one? Can he actually play football?” 

That gave me a lot of motivation just to get back on the pitch and prove to everybody at the club that they were right to bet on me. I have to thank Miroslav Klose a lot for that time, because he was my coach on the U-17s, and he showed me no mercy. When it came to defending, I just didn’t get it. I was immature in that sense. I just want to attack and take people on, and he would drill it into me every single day that I had to defend. 

It’s funny because you remember Klose for his goals, right? But he would be killing me….

“Jamal! Jamal! Track back! Defend! YOU MUST DEFEND!!!!”

I’m not going to lie, it was annoying at times. But he made me a more complete player, and we have such a good relationship. (He’s so satisfied with my defending now that he actually lets me practice finishing with him on the national team.)

Without him, I wouldn’t have made the jump so quick to the first team. That day was incredible. Actually, the night before is even more memorable. 

I think every footballer remembers exactly where they were when they got “the call.”

I was actually out for a jog in Munich. It was 2020, just before the pandemic. I was 17. I had my headphones in, and my phone starts ringing. I thought it was my mum. I pick up the phone mid-run, and it’s Tiger Gerland. He said, “I just wanted to let you know that you’re going to train with the first team tomorrow.” 

I was so shocked that I actually turned around and ran back home to tell my mum. I ran in the door and I was just like, “Mum!!! Mum!!! You’re not going to believe this!!! We have to eat dinner now. I have to go to bed!” 

I tried to go to bed that night at 10 o’ clock. 

Yeah. 

No. 

Not happening. 

I was so nervous. Heart pounding. Staring up at the ceiling. 

11. 12. 1. 

I don’t know what time I ended up falling asleep. It’s like…. How can I even dream tonight? What’s the point? In the morning, the dream is going to be real. 

The funny thing is, my mum had to drive me to training the next day. I mean, that’s what we did every day. But now I’m going to training with Müller and Neuer and Kimmich and my mum is dropping me off in her little VW Polo. I’m trying to get into this killer mindset, and my mum is like, “Jamal, did you eat enough breakfast? Jamal, turn the volume down. Jamal, don’t forget to text me when training is over. Jamal….”

“Mum, I need to focus! Can I please control the playlist?” 

It was a comedy. 

She knew I was nervous because I’m usually singing in the car the whole ride, but I was dead silent. 

We finally get to the facility. Open the car door…

“Love you! Have fun! Text me!” 

“Alright, alright.”

“Jamal?”

“Love you, mum.” 

Shut the door. Walk up to the gate where the first team trains. And I’m literally thinking, “I hope the security lets me in?” 

They let me in, thank God. But I had no idea where to go. I was just there to make up the numbers that day. The first team was already in a meeting about a Champions League game. So I’m just sitting in the lobby, waiting for someone to come and get me. I felt like an intern on the first day at the office. Sitting there too scared to even pull out my phone … waiting … so nervous….

Finally, I see my boy Josh Zirkzee walking down the stairs, and he’s just grinning ear to ear, like….

“Ha! Look who it is…… Come on bro, I’ll show you around.”

I remember just walking into the dressing room and standing there, basically. 

I was so scared to sit in somebody’s seat by accident. I was just trying to be invisible until someone told me where to sit. 

You know when you don’t really know what to do with your arms? 

I’m standing there like:

“Don’t annoy anybody. Just don’t annoy anybody.”

See, I had heard all these stories as a kid, watching documentaries on the NBA.

The rookie, you know? 

“We gotta show the rookie what it’s like here.” 

I thought they were going to be so tough on me. But literally, everybody was so nice and welcoming. (Alright, almost everybody. I’m still not forgiving Leroy for the Bambi nickname. It’s a little bit too good, you know what I mean?)

The entire culture of Bayern — Mia san Mia — that’s not just something that we say. It’s hard to explain until you’re in the dressing room, but it’s more like a family atmosphere. I don’t think I would’ve believed it until I was actually in there experiencing it. That first day was so important for me. Not as a footballer, but as a person, honestly.

When we got on the pitch, I remember seeing Thiago playing two-touch with somebody across the entire pitch. Half to half. No mistakes. Perfect touch. I had never seen anything like it. I was just thinking: Oh my God. 

If I saw it right now, today, I would still be thinking: Oh my God. 

It didn’t even make sense. It was a glitch. Thiago is a glitch. 

I just remember the first drill that we did was a possession drill, and I was in the middle. All I wanted was to make sure that the level didn’t drop when I was in there. 

“Don’t let them notice that you’re 17.” 

That was my entire goal. 

Everything after that was kind of a blur. But I remember coming off the pitch and just looking at the other players, and I knew that I belonged. I could just see it in their faces. The level didn’t drop. 

After that first training session, I got dressed and I had to text my mum, literally: 

“OK, we’re done. Can you come pick me up?”

I waited for her in the carpark for like 30 minutes. Everyone was walking to their Audis. “See you later, Jamal.” Finally, my mum pulled up in the VW Polo. I got into the car and it was like it was the first day of school all over again. She was smiling, like, “Sooooo, how was it? Did you have fun?” 

I said, “It was cool. Yeah, it was cool.” 

“That’s great.” 

Silence. Just chilling. Smiling out the car window….

What a memory. 

That was the start of the next chapter of our lives. A lot of things happened really fast after that. The pandemic. My first match in the empty stadium against Freiburg. (All you could hear was Radio Müller.) My first goal against Schalke. My first match in a sold-out stadium against Leipzig, when real football had finally returned. (“Ohhh, you scared, Bambi? Is the kid afraid?” The kid wasn’t afraid.) My first World Cup. The first time I held the number 10 shirt in my hands at the Euros. The saxophone guy. The joy that we brought to the country. Amazing memories.

I’ll tell those stories some day, when I’ve had time to process it all. But the thing that comes to my mind right now is that first training session at Bayern. Sometimes you have to go back in the camera roll to remember the little things. That’s why I wanted to write this. To get the memories down on paper, and to come back and read them again in 5 or 10 years….. Maybe even in 50. 

This is me at 21.

At 26, I hope I have a World Cup and a few Champions League trophies in the cabinet. I hope that I’ve made my family proud. And I really hope that my dad has finally stopped asking me to ask my teammates if they could take a quick photo with him. Just a quick one. 

(OK, he will still be doing it, let’s be honest. Loving it. Cheesing.) 

That’s it. That’s me. 

That’s the story so far.

– Jamal, 2024