9 Toni Podolski

Growing up in Feuchtwangen, Germany, with my twin brother and family we were a big soccer family. Him and I were both always playing along side each other on the back line as center backs. As any brothers are, especially twins, we competed in every single thing we did, and as the “younger” one, it was always my goal to put perform him. Anytime he got a slide tackle, I went for one too, and vise versa. This resulted in us both leading our clubs in yellow, and red cards, and also setting records for them. Toughness was something we always possessed, and although our heart was in the sport of soccer, our physical abilities and toughness was made for other sports. When our dad came in the room and told Otto and I that we would be moving to America so he could expand the family brewery, we were shocked because it was not something he had ever spoken about, but, we were excited at the thought. We had heard stories of America, and Texas, and boy did it live up to the name. While no, not everyone rode horses and wore cowboy hats, the love of the sport of American football was there. We wanted to enroll in soccer, we knew that all our lives had led up to us playing football. When the coach saw our speed, and stamina that we had built up, along with the muscle and toughness he put us both at the back of his defense. We started our careers on the football field as a sophomore on the JV squad, and before the second game, our coach had moved us both to the varsity. We were the perfect 1-2 punch on defense, and did anything we could to win the game. Through my hard hitting, and German decent, some of the other kids nicknamed me “the panzer” and Toni “The Panzer” Podolski stuck on, and was put in the school and local newspaper. Our dad even had a big setup in his now hit brewery Feirabend Bier. When Otto and I began getting recruitment letters, we both decided that we wanted to go our separate ways. While it made it hard for our parents to watch all of our games, we wanted to make sure that we could compete against each other, and also not steal tackles and interceptions from the other. So here’s to the future, and what will be the next stars of the CFSL.