Chelsea ace Hakim Ziyech admits he owes his ability to playing street football as a kid.
Ziyech admits the mentality he developed in street games helped him in his pro career.
"Street football is always different from professional football. What you take from the street is this mentality, for me I always played against bigger guys because I was always the youngest, but I could play well at the time and the bigger guys played the game hard," he told the club's website.
"So you get that kind of mentality, you get used to it, but then when you start to think about professional football it is totally different but the mentality that you learned from that street football, you take it with you on the pitch.
"With professional football always you have to improve other stuff. You have to be strong because professional football is nice but it takes also a lot of things. Sometimes you have to suffer because when I was young I had to leave my house when I was 13 or 14 and you are still in that child period, when you have to live and enjoy your life just being a child, but at some moments I couldn't because you have to suffer because you always have to think that everything is football, football, football.
"In the Dutch academies they are always busy with you to teach you new stuff but they also let you do everything on instinct. Do things you think are best and keep improving that. You have your responsibility when you don't have the ball but when we as a team have the ball, you can be free, and that is one of the biggest things you learn in Holland. Just be free and play and enjoy playing."