Charlie Mingas

On this Kane Ballon d’Or, I have something to say that reflect my point when I talk about football and life. Look at Kane, he’s 33, look at the players around his age Neymar, Pogba, Dybala, Lukaku, amount others. Compare their Journey with Harry Kane. Can you see where I am going?? That’s life. 10 years ago, you won’t actually think Harry Kane will be a ballon d’or winner and Neymar highest finish will be third. Look at his career, till age 30. It’s always about the things he couldn’t win. But today he’s won the highest award in football. That’s also how life is, the journey might be long, might take another route different to others but doesn’t mean you’re late. There’s no late comer for success. Benzema played the most games before winning ballon d’or, Kane has played the second most games, yet it’s not a stat people remember. And that’s the thing about life, you can spend so much time looking at people around you and wondering why things are not happening for you at the same pace. You see people your age achieving things you are still praying for, people you started with moving ahead of you, and sometimes you begin to question whether you are doing something wrong. But Kane’s story is a reminder that everybody has their own journey. You can be good at what you do, put in the work for years and still have to wait longer than you expected before everything finally comes together. Imagine if Kane had allowed the things he couldn’t achieve at Tottenham to define his entire career. Imagine if he had started believing that the opportunity to win the biggest trophies had passed him by. Today, we probably wouldn’t be having this conversation the way we are having it. He kept showing up, kept scoring goals, kept improving, and when the opportunity came to take a different route, he took it. Sometimes, the problem is that we judge our lives based on where we think we should be by a certain age. At 25, you think you should have achieved this. At 30, you think you should have figured everything out. And when life doesn’t happen according to that timeline, you start feeling like you are behind. But behind who? Who decided that everybody must achieve their dreams at the same age? Kane is 33, and he has just reached a height many people thought he would never reach. That should tell you something. Your story is not finished simply because you haven’t achieved what you wanted to achieve by now. You haven’t failed simply because somebody else got there before you. And you are not late just because your journey is taking longer than you imagined. Keep working. Keep showing up. Keep becoming better at what you do. You don’t know how your story will end, and you don’t need to have everything figured out today. Sometimes, all you need to do is keep going long enough to see what your life can become. Harry Kane’s journey is a reminder that you should never be in a hurry to write yourself off. The chapter you are currently in is not necessarily the conclusion of your story.