Toni Duggan Quotes

Real Madrid wanted me to join their academy. It was a big decision to move when I was 15. It's a key age for a youngster, and you're close to your friends and family. But I moved to Madrid, and my family stayed at home. It made me mature earlier than normal. That was a very big decision, and it changed me in a positive way.

I grew up really fast when I moved to England when I was 12 years old.

I went to England for five months when I was in high school, by myself, so I did experience a bit of being the fish out of water.

My first experience out of my country was Ecuador. That was a very good option for me. To know how you can develop your coaching style or your personality being away and being alone, that is not easy.

Finding your feet in a new country provides an enormous boost to your confidence and independence.

Going to Watford at such a young age and leaving everyone behind and being around new people was very different for me. Adapting was a challenge. I was staying in a boarding school and in a different culture that I wasn't used to. It was very hard to adapt, build confidence and change my attitude.

When I was 16 I took the first opportunity I had to play basketball in a different country. I flew to Europe for the first time and found myself in the small town of Macon, in France. That was the first time I lived far away from my people, from my culture. I was young and had to adapt quickly.

I was only 19 when I came to Hoffenheim. Everything was new to me - a strange country, a foreign language. That was not easy at the beginning. Europe was a big adventure to me, and of course I had my doubts.

I was really shy when I was back in Brazil, so coming to Europe was very tough. I was arriving as a kid fresh from Brazil into a big team like Inter with a lot of star names.

Culture shock is often felt sharply at the borders between countries, but sometimes it doesn't hit fully until you've been in a place for a long time.

I moved to London with this really warped sense of expectation.

I moved to Milan when I was 15. I was always looking for something; I never really felt like I belonged where I was, so I went to live overseas.

When I left the U.S. for the first time, I spent my first year abroad in Japan. That culture shock and abundance of new stimuli combined with a lack of guidance forced me to develop my own approaches to learning and juggling.

When I graduated from high school, I made the decision to pursue my dance training in London, England. I was so scared at first, not knowing if this little girl from small town Canada could possibly make it with these highly trained London dancers.

I love New York. I'm taking English lessons there for the first time. I used to live in Tokyo, but I needed something new. I'm really close to my family. I miss them all the time, but we Skype a lot.

I moved away when I was young, when I was about 19. I'd literally come from an area with dirt roads and stuff like that, right to the centre of a city of about five million people. It's been great. I'm based in New York, and every day, it's amazing.

I wanted to do something far from my intellectual and physical home, so I went to live in Beijing for eight months and took Mandarin Chinese.

I was scouted when I was, like, sixteen, and I hated it. I wasn't ready to work. When I turned 19, I decided to move to Paris to pursue modeling for myself there. It was kind of a way to get out of the house and discover something for myself, in a way.

As much as my parents were worried about me moving to London at 17, they could see that I was hungry to find my path. And it probably helped that they saw me succeeding at it, slowly but surely.

I left home when I turned 17 and ran away to New York. I did a lot of moving. I was based in New York and country-hopping, so I was always 'the new girl'.

I didn't realize how interesting the place I come from is until I left home and saw how other cultures handled things differently.

Leaving home early is always complicated. But when I arrived in Germany, I encountered an incredible structure built by the company that takes care of my career. They did not leave me wanting for anything. The most complicated thing was really the language. Otherwise, everything was taken care of.

When you go to a new country, you don't have the same facilities as you had in the one before. You adapt very quickly to the circumstances.

I don't know if I'll quit Ireland. I like living here because I like the people here, but you never know what's going to happen.

In Italy, you're in your comfort zone when it comes to language, lifestyle, your habits and preparations, and moving abroad is not easy. It's not easy to carry over your own ideas about football, your own methods. You have to get everything across in a different language, and that wastes a lot of energy.