Steve Zakuani's story will always be one that resonates with Sounders FC supporters.
The club's first ever draft pick, Zakuani enjoyed a fantastic start to his professional career and became a household name throughout Major League Soccer. A horrific leg injury in his third season seemed to derail his career but after 15 months of recovery and rehabilitation he made his return to the pitch for the Rave Green.
500 Days is his story.
Released this week, the self-funded book is an account of his physical and mental struggle against an injury that nearly took his profession and his leg. Having recently retired from MLS after four further seasons, 500 Days brings you back to Zakuani's darkest hours, but also his brightest...and the author hopes it will help guide others in their respective recoveries.
Zakuani sat down with SoundersFC.com to talk about the book, what it took to write and where he is today in the first of our Q&A series. His book is available for purchase here.
SFC.com:What are your overall thoughts on the book and how this experience has gone for you?
Steve Zakuani: Mostly the book is about my injuries, that I’m sure most Sounders fans and people connected with the Sounders will remember. But there were journals and stuff I kept during the time, writing different things. It was like an outlet for me during rehab and my physical therapy. And it was towards the middle of last year, 2014, that I looked back at those journals and saw that there was a story that could be told. And I just put them together, added more things around it, and it became the book. So it was a process that began during the injury, and finished this year.
I just wanted to put a story out there that people can read and kind of understand what athletes go through. Injuries are difficult, but it also relates to real-life lessons that you can learn from. So I tried to put it all in the book, and I’m really happy with the final product.
SFC.com: With the book now finished and for sale, how do you feel it came together?
SZ: I’m happy. Obviously one of the things that has happened with this is I’ve become an author, which is pretty cool. Obviously I’ve retired since then, and there have been a lot of changes. So I’m happy. Always with that kind of story, there will be a lot of interest from publishers. But we actually wanted self-publishing, so we did it ourselves. When I say we, I mean myself and a couple of friends. We literally just put the book together, and worked with professional editors, and ran a Kickstarter campaign. We wanted to get people involved, market the book, and get the word out there. And that was a huge success.
It was a way to get rid of some things and make sure people can learn from my career. I think there was a lot more satisfaction from self-publishing, how we did it ourselves. To have it now, when I hold a physical copy in my hand, it’s unbelievable. It was a better feeling than having a publishing company do it, so I think that definitely adds to it and makes me more proud of what we did.
SFC.com: What is the main message in the book? What do you mainly want people to know about your career and your journey?
SZ:
I wanted to include a backstory on how I ended up on the Sounders. I do talk about some of the time I spent playing on the Arsenal youth team – the academy -- when I first started playing. I do talk a little about my teenage years and how I was in love with football, fell out of love with the game, and then got back into it. And then I talk about the injury, memories with the Sounders, and some of my teammates, some of the bonds we formed, and successful teams I was on. And then I talk about primarily the injuries and going through rehab. I think the message comes out in those chapters that talk about coming back from what was a career-threatening injury at the time.
It’s perseverance. It’s never giving in. It’s standing tall in the face of adversity so it’s trying to inspire people to think that, not just soccer players, but anyone who has challenges in their lives, that you can stand up and you can fight back.
I tried to be kind of honest in the book and talk about the times when I thought about whether I would ever play again. To culminate that in 500th day, which was my first start after the injury, playing against Dallas and assisting the goal for Mauro Rosales was kind of the joy of… that there’s something good for you on the other side of the adversity you’re facing.
SFC.com: You obviously had quite a story to tell. What inspired you to want to tell it and make it public knowledge?
SZ:
From when the injury happened, as I said in the book, I received between now and then, about eight or nine thousand letters. It’s been crazy. You get letters, and messages from social media, emails, people on the street and everyone was just asking me questions. What I realized was that for them, they asked me that question just one time, they had that conversation one time. I’ve had that conversation hundreds of times and it was like, ‘Well, what can I do to just have this conversation once and for all.’ That’s when someone suggested to make those journals into a book.
I think for me the process was that the therapy helped me, and because it helped me talking to other athletes, as well. Being injured is a tough, tough thing for athletes and no one’s actually told what [the reality of] what it is. I get lots of young kids emailing me, their parents emailing me, saying ‘Hey, this person broke their ankle’ or ‘They’re having shoulder surgery and they’re scared. Do you have any advice?’ I’ve kind of become the person they go to for that, so this is also a book they can read when they’re struggling with injuries and see that it’s okay to have doubts and just think you’ll never be back to where you were. It’s okay, but at the same time, you do eventually make it back.
SFC.com: Was it ever difficult to go back and revisit those times or did you find it to be a therapeutic way to cope with it and move on?
SZ:
When I read it, I try to distance myself from the emotions of it. I just kind of read it as a piece and made sure it flowed properly and that the editor did a good job, and all of that.
There are a couple of spots in the book that were more difficult to read: The actual injury itself and some of the more emotional moments with the Sounders fans, like them singing my name when I was in the stadium for the first game after the injury, at the 11th minute holding up those cards…I still see those cards in peoples’ offices to this day and they have those cards up on the wall. Reading those just brought back a lot of memories, and plus came at the time I announced my retirement and there was another outpouring of support from Sounders fans, so those were the moments I’d say were difficult.
I think I’m a bit far removed now from the actual event that I can talk about it and look back on it and I see a lot of the positives because I’m on the other side of it.
SFC.com: From your perspective now, being retired, what do you envision yourself doing going forward and how can this book help you move into a life off the pitch?
SZ:
I think the book was a good first step because when you’ve played something your whole life – I played 21 years, six as a pro – it’s all you’ve done every day for 21 years, to just stop doing it is going to be a tough transition. This year on January 21 was the first time in years that I didn’t have to go into a training camp. Having the book to work on was huge. If I didn’t have something to work on I probably would have been missing playing a lot, but I’ve been busy writing the book.
I do one thing with the game. I do a lot of private coaching for young kids. I’ve had them emailing me…I don’t want to be a coach, but I do one-on-one with just two or three kids. Just help them improve their game, get onto their high school teams or whatever they want to do, I’m offering that as well.
On my own time, I’m just enjoying some of the time I’ve never had before, so I’ve been traveling. I’ve been to Europe a couple of times already and thought I’d never be able to do that before so I’m still trying to figure out exactly what it’ll look like, but I’ve definitely been busy with the book and now I’ll see what the next phase looks like.
SFC.com You’ve done some traveling and you moved around. You played in Portland for the last year of your career. You had that strong bond with Seattle being that you’re going to continue going forward with the club. What has that been like since you were drafted and how engrained is the Sounders community in what you do and who you are as a person?
SZ:
I think I’ll always be connected with the Sounders organization. I think there are a few reasons for that. One of them is that I was the club’s first-ever draft pick and I remember that 2009 team very well. I was kind of Seattle’s first draft pick that was successful, starting every game and playing. I think I built a bond with the fans during that time and then obviously, they supported me through every win, loss or draw, and through the injury and all of that. That bond was built.
But I think also with the club in general, I have a good relationship with Adrian [Hanauer], with Chris Henderson, with Sigi [Schmid] who did the foreword of the book. I know them now going back to 2009. I’ve known them now six years and I know Sigi from just before that because he used to coach in Columbus.
I think as long as those guys are involved with the Sounders in some way, there’s always going to be some connection with me and the club and I definitely intend to be around more. I’m going to show up at practices to watch practice, watching the games on TV, following the team. I still have a lot of friends on the team too and I played a long time for the team, so that’s home.
Seattle is home for me and I have a great bond with the fans and a great bond with the people and the city of Seattle. And just a fantastic bond with the club and the people who would make the lunch, the people who sorted the tickets, the guys who worked the field on game day. I know everyone at the club and it’s just a great thing that I appreciate.
SFC.com: You touched on your relationship with Sigi there. He wrote the foreword. What was that relationship like? It’s obviously one that’s stretched a few years now.
SZ: I think at one time Sigi described our relationship as a brutally honest one, where he’s always been honest with me and I’ve always been with him. We’ve always had a good relationship. It’s been open. I think now that I’m on the other side of my career, I can look back at times when I can see he was telling me things I didn’t see at the time because I was young and I fought that. You know, even as a player, things should be done this way but he’d been there so many times. He’s been coaching since before I was born. I see now that he always had my best interests at heart and those times when we played two or three games in a week and I wanted to play every game and he would hold me out of a game and say, ‘I don’t want to wear you out or injured’ and I’d think he was dropping me from the team and I’d be upset with him. Now I’m seeing that he always had my best interests at heart.
The fact that I left and went to Portland and now I can still have access to those guys and communication with those guys…it’s great. The second I retired, Adrian reached out, Sigi reached out, Chris – the whole organization. We just have a good relationship. I talked to Sigi right away when I had the book idea and said, ‘Look, would you mind writing the foreword?’ and he wanted to do it right away. He took his time because the team was in the playoffs and so there were a couple of delays there, but obviously that’s understandable. He’s someone who did the most for my professional career. He did a lot. We had a lot of success together. He put a lot of trust in me, making me the first pick for the Sounders, and I’d like to think I was able to prove him right in that sense with the way that I played on the field for the Sounders. He’s someone, who like I said, I’ll be around the team a lot, I’m going to support them, I’m a Sounders fan now, and I’m very happy with our relationship.
SFC.com: The people who are going to be reading this book, or a lot of those people, are Sounders fans. What was your connection with them and what would you say to them if you could send a message to them outside of the book?
SZ: I mean to the Sounders fans, there’s been times when I’ve been asked about them and I’ve tried to hold back my statement because I’ve never wanted it to come across as cliché or just saying the things that I should say, because you’re supposed to like the fans or say good things. In all honesty, I know a lot of them personally just because of how social media works and you see the same faces and I see them at games and I used to see them when I’d walk around over the years and it’s just…I’m grateful. I’m happy that I got to play in front of something like 60,000 fans screaming, I’m grateful that they got to cheer me on when we won, lost or had a draw. I’m grateful that they supported me through my injury and everything.
It’s a group of people that I’m always going to respect and admire and it’s now a group of people that I’m a part of. I’m also a fan. I said one of my dreams was to watch a game at CenturyLink, in stands with the fans and I’m excited to do it one of these days. One of the games this season I’m definitely going to be doing that. I’m a part of them now and I’ll always, always, no matter where my life takes me, have a bond with the fans of Seattle Sounders.
You can purchase Zakuani's book 500 Dayshere.
