This week is different. Daniel Cappellaro, known to most as D10, has a story big enough that we split it into two episodes. Part 1 is his journey as a player.
Daniel did not touch a football until he was eight, on a family trip to Italy where his cousin played in Serie C. He came home to Perth, found two clubs on a school notice board, and chose Armadale Soccer Club purely because they trained twice a week instead of once.
What followed was West Ham's Hammers Academy in Western Australia, a scholarship at John Curtin Soccer Excellence, and a pathway that barely existed. No academies. State teams that appeared and disappeared. His references were Stan Lazaridis and Harry Kewell, recorded off The World Game onto VHS.
Then futsal found him at eleven, through a low bounce ball a coach had picked up from a guy in Leeds. It took him to Argentina, Spain, England, a Champions League campaign with a Scottish club, and eventually Melbourne. Along the way he became one of sixteen unlockable characters in FIFA Street, played against Falcao and alongside Douglas Costa, met Neymar in Brazil, and built an audience of hundreds of thousands without ever wanting to be an influencer.
Part 2 lands next Monday and goes into the coaching side: skill acquisition, small sided games, and what a week inside the Melbourne City academy looks like.