Size isn’t everything in football, that’s according to United States National Team and Leeds United star Brenden Aaronson.
The 22-year-old New Jersey native is lining up for the USA at the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar. He believes his journey to the promised land has been all about hard work and commitment, while overcoming a size disadvantage as a youngster.
In an interesting interview with Fox Soccer, Aaronson, who moved to the Premier League with Leeds this summer, said his small stature made him doubt himself, but forced him to work on other areas of his game.
“It was tough because I felt that I’d worked harder than everyone else growing up. But when you lack power and physicality it comes into play with age,” explained the attacking midfielder.
“When you are small like this you have to think the game more. I’d look at film and then go out the next day and train when no one else was training.”
And his desire paid off. Aaronson scored on his debut as an 18-year-old for Major League Soccer outfit Philadelphia Union, before his displays earned him his US national team debut in 2020.
A move to Europe to play for Red Ball Salzburg followed in 2021. During 18 months in Austria he won two league titles and turned out 10 times in the Champions League, scoring twice in the quailifiers.
Then, in the summer of2022, Aaronson moved to Leeds United for a reported ÂŁ24.7m.
Now, he’s at the World Cup, the pinnacle of the game, and as you will see in the video below, he puts it all down to hard work and a dogged determination to succeed.
We hope you liked this feature on Brenden Aaronson’s journey to the World Cup.
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Brendan Aaronson Image Credit: Morgan Tencza, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons