am as a 14 year old.
"I played seriously until I was about 13 or 14 then the (US) national team wanted me to try out for it,"
Beckham Jr. told the Star-Ledger in the summer
. "It's just so much for a young kid to have to decide that. You'd have to leave your family. But I always played in the premiere leagues. I was 11 playing U-14, stuff like that. I was always playing up."
But Beckham Jr. grew up in New Orleans and there is no MLS team in the area for now. The nearest top-flight club is the Houston Dynamo, more than 300 miles away. And he wasn't interested in Europe.
"At such a young age it's hard to just leave your family and say I'm gong to go to Europe and do my thing,"
he told TMZ Sports at a sneaker store opening
. "It was one of those things where you couldn't wrap your mind around that and just completely leave your family and leave the country."
He wound up staying local, playing American football at LSU before getting drafted by the NFL Giants and becoming an overnight celebrity in November with a catch many are calling one of the greatest in NFL history (
WATCH it here
).
But whatever Beckham Jr. does with the pigskin, he still calls soccer his first love and says
he probably would have turned into a Cristiano Ronaldo-type player
.
And he gets to show it off every now and then on the gridiron (
).
