Stars from other sports, like mixed martial arts, tennis, athletics, cricket, formula one, basketball, and others appeared to have embraced football drills for leisure. Conor McGregor, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, Joel Embiid, Usain Bolt, Mo Farah, Sebastian Vettel, Mick Schumacher, Virat Kohli, James Anderson, and Stuart Broad were catching fun on different surfaces.
The sportsmen were in short videos posted at different times over the past years where they meddled in the round leather affair.
Conor McGregor drilled himself in several rounds of a penalty shootout with a friend on a greenfield that looked like his backyard. His incredible left foot was the talking point as he converted almost all his effort at goal.
Joel Embiid, on the other hand, did well to juggle the ball with his thigh in a sensational move which later ended with a header into the basket on a court.
However, it was a test of stability when Usain Bolt and Mo Farah appeared in the video. They placed a hand on the ball and sprinted around it cyclically. While Mo Farah came out perfect with the test, his counterpart, Usain Bolt got spent before taking the second kick.
Usain Bolt, now 36, retired from his sprint career in 2017 and still holds several records in the 100-meter and 200-meter categories of athletics.
He had revealed in 2016 a desire to play professional football for Manchester United. A dream that he partly fulfilled.
But in January 2019, the sprint legend, Usain Bolt called time on his bid to become a professional football player, emphasizing “it was fun while it lasted.”
He had played for Central Coast Mariners in Australia but never signed a professional contract.
He continued by saying, “I don’t want to say it wasn’t dealt with properly, but I think we went about it, not the way we should. One learns the lesson because we live to learn. It was a good experience. I enjoyed just being in a team, it was different from track and field and it was fun while it lasted.”
Interestingly, when entire the football lovers in the world were waiting for the record-breaking athlete to transform his talents in track and field events to football, he gave up saying he now wants to focus on other things.
With recent events, football is fast becoming the only sport in the world that commands more interest even from other sports players.
