Zakuani: THE EARLY YEARS

I was born on May 31, 1986 in Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, but because I moved to England in 1992 my memories of Kinshasa are pretty faint. I do remember kicking a football around in the street [like the kids pictured above in Kinshasa], but there were bigger things to worry about. There was a lot of conflict and violence. Soon my dad decided he wanted to get his family out of the country.

My dad was a translator who was working in England. He realised he could get us a better life in the UK. It simply wasn´t very safe where we were. Eventually he was able to get my mum, my three sisters, two brothers and me to England. I was really excited because I´d seen adverts for computer games and Nintendo and I knew they were in England. In Kinshasa we just made up games in the street, so I wanted to get to England so I could play computer games.

When we arrived in London we first lived in a hotel. We then moved to Wembley for a couple of years before settling down in Tottenham. That´s when I started playing football more regularly on Saturdays and Sundays for a youth club down the road. My cousin played for a team called Comet in the Echo League in Essex so I went along to train and play with them.

Their manager didn´t like me very much and told me I wasn´t good enough. One day we played Dagenham and beat them 16-0. I was on the bench for Comet and after the match my manager told me he´d chatted to the Dagenham manager and I´d been transferred!

It was after I started playing for Dagenham that I really began to improve. Being told I wasn´t good enough had been a huge motivating factor. I wanted to prove that guy wrong. I did well with Dagenham and then joined Lakeview, who were in the Premier division of the Echo League. I was there for a year before I joined Orient´s youth team.