The playground had everything: swings, a sand pit and even a two-meter high slide that attracted children from all over the neighborhood. But three-year-old Nabil Akaazoun couldn't have been less interested. All he wanted was to kick the soccer ball in his grandfather's hands. "I started kicking it then and never really stopped," says Nabil, now a player in the highest Dutch soccer league. "No one expected me to get here," says Nabil, born in the Netherlands to Moroccan parents and raised in the Dutch capital with three younger sisters. "Everyone told me that at 22 I was too old to become a professional soccer player, but look at me." Even though this year he has joined the big league—playing for the second team of a professional soccer club, he still drives his father's modest 1980s, Bordeaux red Mercedes, although he admits he would prefer to drive his own, more flashier car. Driving to practice with his club on a recent afternoon, Nabil told the story of growing up as the child of immigrants before joining the B squad of NAC Breda.
It was his late grandfather who enrolled Nabil in his first club, when he was four years old. "He just knew I had talent. My grandfather was babysitting me, because my father was working a lot. He made sure I joined a club. I was only four and playing with the six-year-old kids." It still makes him smile remembering those first years on a grass pitch. He later left the club and again picked up street soccer in his old neighborhood. "I was always outside anyway, playing soccer on the same square my grandfather took me to," he says. "Even on school days I played until eleven o'clock at night." On a recent ride on the back of a friend's scooter, he noticed how the game has changed in the Dutch capital over the past 15 years. The squares scattered around Amsterdam attract far fewer young boys. The sun was out on a recent spring day, driving out months of winter chill, but there was little going on in the narrow streets of his old neighborhood. "Look at this", he exclaims, "with weather like this, when I was small there where at least 30 guys waiting for their turn to play street soccer. How many are there today? Fifteen?" He blames technology. "No one gets out here anymore. They look at videos about street soccer on theirsmartphones instead of coming out here and make their own moves." Nabil's love of the game first took on the appearance of a career when he was 11 and saw Dutch soccer star Jermaine Vanenburgdoing tricks on the street. "He did unimaginable things with a ball. I knew a few tricks, but what he was doing was like magic." From that moment on, Nabil started training more seriously. Years later he came face-to-face with his hero, Vanenburg, when he played against him on one of the squares in Amsterdam. "It was so exciting. Everybody was screaming: Action! Action! Take that ball from that little kid! And then I did it. I was able to keep the ball for six minutes straight. I couldn't believe it: Me against Vanenburg." The public was outraged and Nabil was spotted and recruited to play indoor soccer at the age of 14. With playing professional futsal he earned his nickname: The Killer. "I was very proud of that name. I loved it, I was a real killer. Well, not a real one, but it meant I was good at giving panna (rolling a ball through an opponent’s legs). Not everyone gets a nickname, it really means you are good at something. If someone asks me now, I laugh and tell them: you'll see what that means." No one knows his nickname at the B-squad of NAC Breda, where they just call him Nabil. The young men in his team all work hard to become professional field soccer players. As does Nabil. At practice, he does laps around the field, his thick head of dark curls bouncing, and jokes with his teammates. On the way home from a recent practice he talks about being bothered by the poverty he sees, a contrast to life as a professional athlete. Now he teaches soccer techniques, sometimes to underprivileged children, in his spare time. "Some of them are so talented, but don't even have money to buy the right shoes. It hurts me to see that." For Nabil, buying equipment never really was a problem. "I started earning my own money doing indoor soccer at a young age. It kept me away from field soccer for a long time. It felt good to make my own money instead of having to ask my parents to buy me the newest shoes and games." Street soccer brought Nabil more than money, tricks and technique: "Street soccer is also about respect. Playing without a referee forces that." Beyond that, the difference between street, indoor and field soccer is not that big says Nabil: "For me it is all the same: It is soccer and that is where my heart is."
