There’s no doubt that New York Giants receiver Odell Beckham Jr. is a superstar athlete. It turns out, however, that he didn’t always think he was going to grow up being an NFL star. From the age of 3 to 14, he thought perhaps he’d play the European form of football, aka soccer, and he thinks he could’ve made it big.  He described himself as a kid “like a Neymar or a Messi type of guy” to Sky Sports’s “Soccer AM” show on Monday, referring to South American phenoms Neymar and Lionel Messi, who are currently teammates on Spain’s La Liga team Barcelona.  Beckham wasn’t joking. He revealed he only decided to pursue American football over soccer when he realized going further in soccer meant he would have to leave his family, which, by the way, both Neymar and Messi did when they were young.  “My coach was pushing and trying to get me on the national team, but at that age, you’re 13 or 14 years old, you know to make it big in soccer, you’re probably going to have to go overseas. Obviously, that would be the goal, that would be the dream,” Beckham said. “At that age it was just hard for me to get up and leave my family and just go.”  And so Beckham stayed and, so far, it seems like the right decision. Not only did he win the NFL’s Offensive Rookie of the Year award for his performance last season, but he could go down in history as making the greatest catch of all time.  Marissa Payne writes for The Early Lead, a fast-breaking sports blog, where she focuses on what she calls the “cultural anthropological” side of sports, aka “mostly the fun stuff.” She is also an avid WWE fan.
The NFL's Offensive Rookie of the Year is confident that if he didn't take up American football, he would've succeeded at the European variety.