Collin Benjamin
Founder of CBS Collin Benjamin had an outstanding career playing for German Bundesliga side Hamburger SV for 10 years before becoming an assistant coach with second division side 1860 Munich.
However, he gave up on his promising career as a coach in the German professional football league to return home to Namibia to pursue a new dream of building a football academy to help establish Namibia’s new generation of footballing stars.
I`ve been there and know what is needed to succeed at the highest level. For me it’s a calling and more a case of what I can do for my country instead of what my country can do for me.
Biography
Collin Benjamin was born and raised in Katutura, Windhoek and the hard reality of growing up surrounded by poverty made a permanent mark on him from young age and should have a strong impact on his future life and mindset. He showed an extraordinary talent for soccer and as a youngster already found his goal in life: playing soccer for a living. This was the point where Collin’s vision and path to follow would be brought into being.
Collin started working on making his dream come true and thus in 1998 he made his senior debut for the Brave Warriors, Namibia’s Football National Team. Meanwhile he never gave up on his dream of becoming a professional player, which was still as strong as ever. The following year Benjamin made the courageous decision of going to Germany, determined to succeed and work hard on his dream.
In those days, when the other guys were stronger and faster, I trained on my own, I ran in the forest and trained in the gym. I was determined to break the poverty cycle that I grew up in, that was my main motivation, (…) so that my kids would not have to go through that one day.
Nevertheless it was not easy for him to maintain his path to success. After having attended a few trials with a third division team he considered his dream to be dead, as the other players seemed to be stronger and faster than him. Knowing that he couldn’t go back, Collin kept fighting, decided to persevere and eventually joined a fifth division team. His hard work started to pay off and at the end of the season he was able to move to a fourth division team. His big breakthrough came when he used to play for Hamburger SV II and was asked to sign up to the first team after impressing the coaches with a great performance and training.
Collin Benjamin played for 10 years for Hamburger SV in the Bundesliga. Nowadays he is the Head Coach of the Namibian National Team (“Brave Warriors”).
Vision
Having reached the goal of his dreams Collin quickly realized that this was just the beginning and to stay at the top of the world requires full dedication and consistent hard work. In an analogy Benjamin once explained the big motivational factor in his life.
Every morning when I wake up I ask myself if I want to live like a lion or a springbok. Both wake up and both have to eat – the lion wants to eat the springbok, so the springbok has to run and ran only stop when the lion is tired. Am I going to have to run like the springbok or am I going to wait for the right moment to attack. I always asked myself why am I doing this, and that’s where my mental strength comes from.
With his story Collin wants to encourage young national talents and tell them, that if he was able to make it to become a global role model in our world, then there is no reason why not each single one of them couldn’t make it. With his CBS Academy he wants to change lives on and off the pitch for regional young athletes by providing them all with more opportunities so that students with strong characters can perform at their highest level regardless of the situation they find themselves in.
You gotta have that vision and you gotta work for it. Be consistent, be passionate and get that education.