You are partially right but not for the reasons you think. I do not know enough about Southampton history to identify the player I would have wanted to be. And the way the question was phrased I sort of assumed that I was supposed to consider the whole history not just current first teamers. So in that respect I was deflecting. If the question was which current southampton player would I most want to be, I can come up with answer. (See below.)
That being said, I never had the opportunity to be a professional athlete. I probably would not have been good enough but a knee injury at age 11 in 1969 would have limited my potential anyway. But I donât really think I would like to lead the life of a professional athlete. I donât like to travel that much. I donât like to exercise as much as I should much less as much as a professional athlete needs to. I also see the downsides of too much fameâmy legal career, my former game designer career, and my blog provides me with enough of that. (Or maybe too muchâthese days I seem to be spending about an hour a day on the phone talking with other lawyers about their cases because I have become something of an authority on civil committments in California.)
On the other hand, I would definitely prefer to be younger and richer than I am now. So being a richer person in my 30s who does not need to work out 8 hours a day and spend most of the year traveling around with a football club does in fact appeal to me more than being a professional football player, even a beloved first teamer.
There are alternate lives I might like to have leadâmet the right woman and had children or become an evolutionary biologist instead of a lawyerâbut professional athlete is not one of them.
But if you insist that I accept the premise, but allow me to limit myself to players I am sufficiently familiar with from my time following the club I could narrow it down to three: Rickie Lambert, Steven Davis, or James Ward-Prowse.
Lambert becuase being a great penalty shooter appeals to me and, after being a hero here he got to go back to his boyhood club and while that didnât work out as well as he would have liked, it still must have been a wonderful time for a while.
Davis because I am impressed by his solid work ethic and I think it must be very special to (unexpectedly) captain North Ireland into the Eurosâsomething I expect he never thought possible.
Ward-Prowse because he is the young player on the current club who still has the potenial to be great and, in any case, has most of his career ahead of him. It would probably be interesting to live that out and see what happens.
If I had to pick one it would be Lambert. (And yes I recognize that except for the fact Lambert is not yet retired, he is very close to my original answer.)
