Hi, you can call me Cornelius.
I am colour blind.
But I want to say something important from the start.
Being colour blind is not the end of the world. It does not mean a child cannot play football. It does not mean they are broken. It does not mean they have no future in the game.
The real problem is not colour blindness by itself. The real problem is not knowing. Not being taught. Not being understood. Not being given the tools to adapt.
Up until now, I have rarely told people I am colour blind. Not because I was ashamed of who I am, but because I learned how quickly people can judge you once they know.
Sometimes the look changes. The tone changes. People start seeing the limitation before they see the person. It can become, “He cannot do that because he is colour blind,” or “That will be too difficult for him,” before anyone has even asked how I actually think, adapt or solve the problem.
But the truth is, I had often already found other ways to get to the right answer. I had built my own routes. My own checks. My own patterns. My own ways of understanding things that other people did not even realise were possible.
I learned to adapt quietly
I often found ways around colour confusion without explaining what I was doing or why I was doing it.
I learned to hide it well
People did not always notice because I became good at making sure they had no reason to second-guess what I could see.
That is one of the reasons I know how easy colour blindness is to miss.
I know because I was able to make people not notice mine.
And that matters. Because when a player hides colour blindness well, adults may assume there is no problem. Coaches may think the player is just inconsistent. Parents may think the child is nervous. Teachers may think the child is careless. Clubs may think the player is not quick enough.
But sometimes the player is not failing to think. They are thinking too much. They are checking, comparing, guessing, masking and adapting in silence.
The way people react when someone says they are colour blind can become the same reason that person decides not to say it again.
If a child feels embarrassed, judged, laughed at, doubted or treated like they are less capable, they may keep it to themselves. They may hide it. They may pretend everything is fine. They may keep struggling quietly because silence feels safer than being labelled.
That is why this mission matters to me.
I dreamed of becoming a professional footballer. I trained, played, hoped, sacrificed and believed. Like many young players, I thought that if I worked hard enough, wanted it badly enough and kept going long enough, the dream would still be possible.
But I found out I was colour blind late in my football journey.
By then, years had already gone.
When I found out, part of me felt relief. Suddenly, some of the confusion started to make sense. The mistakes, the hesitation, the moments where football seemed to move too fast, the times I could not explain why I had made the wrong decision — it finally had a name.
There was relief
Finding out I was colour blind helped me understand that I was not stupid, lazy or careless. There was a reason some parts of the game felt harder.
Then came a new problem
Once I knew colour was confusing me, I started noticing it everywhere. That awareness became worry, stress and anxiety during football.
That is one of the hardest parts people do not always understand. Finding out helped, but it also created a new battle. I became more aware of the colours that were confusing me. Kits. Bibs. Cones. Goalkeeper shirts. Referee shirts. Shadows. Mud. Light. Dark. Teammates. Opponents.
Instead of just playing, I started checking. Instead of moving freely, I started questioning. Instead of focusing completely on the game, part of my mind was worrying about colour.
And football demands complete focus. You cannot perform at your best when your brain is busy worrying, stressing and second-guessing what should be automatic.
When I found out, I also felt alone. Isolated. Like I had discovered the problem, but still had nobody to teach me what to do with it.
I could not find a football-specific guide that explained how to perform better under colour confusion. I could not find the education I needed. I did not know where to find adults, coaches, school teachers or football people who understood the problem deeply enough to teach me how to adapt.
I needed to learn how to improve my awareness. I needed to learn how to stop panicking over colours. I needed to build better habits for the pitch. But at the time, I did not know where to turn.
So I kept doing what everyone else was doing. Same drills. Same cones. Same bibs. Same colour-coded coaching. Same expectations. Same pressure.
But the worst part is this:
What was making other players better may have been making me worse — and I did not even know.
If a drill teaches other players to react quickly to colour, but colour is the exact thing confusing me, then I am not learning the same lesson. I am learning hesitation. I am learning doubt. I am learning panic. I am learning to second-guess myself.
That is why awareness matters. Not so the player can make excuses, but so the player can adapt properly.
And one of the hardest parts is this:
My mother paid for everything.
She worked non-stop, often with little earnings, trying to give me every opportunity she could. Football was not free. Trials were not free. Travel was not free. Boots, training, kit, food, transport, time off work — none of it was free.
She carried the cost because she believed in me.
Looking back, that hurts. Because I now understand that I may have unknowingly wasted opportunities she fought so hard to give me. Not because I did not care. Not because I was lazy. Not because I lacked desire. But because I was trying to succeed in a colour-coded game while living with a visual problem nobody had identified.
That creates a pain people do not always see. The player carries the shame. The parent carries the frustration. The family carries the sacrifice. And nobody understands what is really happening.
I know the regret of finding out late. I know the quiet resentment of wishing someone had spotted it earlier. A coach. A club. A teacher. An adult. Anyone.
Not because they were bad people. But because they did not know what to look for.