The weekly football session.

A place to escape.

A place to remove the outside world from your mind.

A place to relieve all your stresses from the past week.

Beyond the professional game, football still leaves a huge impact on millions across the world. The spotlight might sit firmly on the Premier League every weekend, but the real heartbeat of the sport exists far away from the television screen.

Many of us, myself included, once dreamt of becoming a Premier League superstar. Hours were spent in local cages recreating goals we had watched on TV. For many kids growing up in the UK, it usually meant trying to copy iconic goals like Wayne Rooney’s bicycle kick or Suarez’s goal range, in hopes we might end up on that same screen ourselves.

Fast forward ten years, and reality slowly begins to set in.

University.

Full-time jobs.

Responsibilities.

Life.

The dream of becoming a professional footballer quietly withers away, and football eventually becomes something else. No longer a pathway to fame or packed stadiums. It instead evolves into a weekly football session with friends.

But is that actually a bad thing?

Every week, I make an effort to play a football session with some familiar faces from school days. All are around 22, creeping into the stage of life where adulthood begins to demand more of your time and energy. Yet once a week, we’ll all meet for a late-night football session.

It’s nothing glamorous.

In fact, if you’ve ever played at Beckton Power League, you’d know the struggles of playing there. The first thing you notice isn’t the football; it’s the egregious smell. The nearby sewage plant constantly reminds you of its existence. The wind will occasionally carry the smells straight to the pitches. It’s not ideal, but no one really cares.

We laugh about it, make a few jokes and carry on with the game.

The truth is that football itself almost becomes secondary; what really matters is the escape from reality.

For that hour and a half, the outside world disappears. The pressures of work, university deadlines, and everyday responsibilities fade away. Instead, it’s just old friends chasing a ball around, arguing about fouls, treating games like Champions League finals, and reminding each other of the players we once thought we could become.

Without even realising it, those weekly sessions do something important for our wellbeing.

They give us space to breathe.

It does make me wonder about something.

If one of us had made it to the professional game, would that original spark have stayed with us?  Would the joy of simply playing the game survive the pressure, expectations or money that comes with elite-level football?

Maybe chasing the professional dream would have taken away the very thing that made us fall in love with the sport to begin with.

Football is not always about trophies, money, or playing under the bright lights of stadiums. Sometimes it’s just enjoying a late-night game to ease the mind of whatever challenges you may be facing in the real world.

@beyondthepitch.btp