Ep. 34 | England Futsal Captain - Raoni Medina

Today we welcome professional Futsal player and England captain, Raoni Medina, to the podcast. Raoni takes us through what it what like growing up in Brazil and the challenges of moving to Portugal at a young age to pursue his dream of becoming a professional football player. Raoni got selected to play at Sporting Lisbon's academy, sharing the pitch with the likes of Ricardo Quaresma and Cristiano Ronaldo, however, found that experience very challenging. Because he was not from Portugal, Raoni had a hard time to get along with his teammates and coaches who, as he mentioned, bullied him during his time there. Nonetheless, throughout the episode,  Raoni refers to how important this experience was for him and how it shaped him as a person and as a player. We then go onto to talk about Raoni's arrival in England where he decided to pursue a futsal career, however,  the sport wasn't at all established at the time (1st National League began in 2007). After having showed his potential and scoring various goals during important league and cup games, Raoni was approached by members of the FA, asking whether he would be interested in representing England. However, Raoni did not have an English passport at the time. The process of getting the English nationality took some time but did not stop Raoni from winning leagues and golden boots, but finally managed to get his passport and earned his England debut which was an extremely proud moment for him. He explained that being the first player not born in the country to play for England was not well-received by members of the national team. Nevertheless, after having shown his qualities on and off the pitch, Raoni was selected to become England's captain. Raoni shares with us what his first game as captain was like and of the ways he believes a good captain should conduct himself on and off the pitch in order to get the best out of his team. We then go onto talk about some psychological qualities he believes are important to become a successful professional futsal player and of some techniques he uses before games to best mentally prepare himself (e.g., mental imagery). Roani then shares with us that he has worked with a sport psychologist in the past and how much that helped him as an athlete, despite regretting not having used his services earlier. Having recently retired a couple of weeks ago, we then ask Raoni what the retirement process is like and how he is currently experiencing it, being a difficult period for him. We finish off the episode by asking Raoni about his next career goals and ambitions as well as the questions you had for him. Thank you so much for having shared your story Raoni!