Early Life
Spector grew up in the Chicago suburb of Arlington Heights, Illinois, which is also the hometown of former Fulham and US national team player Brian McBride. The youngest of four siblings, he played high school soccer at St. Viator High School and started his club soccer career with Schwaben AC in Buffalo Grove, Illinois, before joining national power Chicago Sockers. He graduated from the United States Soccer Federation's Bradenton Academy at the age of 17 in the summer of 2003. His father is of Russian Jewish, English, and Irish ancestry, and his mother was born in Siegen, Germany. Spector has acquired a German passport, enabling him to play in England without needing a work permit.
Spector's grandfather was the NBA basketball player Art Spector, who was the first player to be signed by the Boston Celtics in 1946 and is known as the "Original Celtic". He died in June 1987 when Jonathan was 15 months old.
Read more about this topic: Jonathan Spector
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“If you are willing to inconvenience yourself in the name of discipline, the battle is half over. Leave Grandma’s early if the children are acting impossible. Depart the ballpark in the sixth inning if you’ve warned the kids and their behavior is still poor. If we do something like this once, our kids will remember it for a long time.”
—Fred G. Gosman (20th century)
“Virtue and vice suppose the freedom to choose between good and evil; but what can be the morals of a woman who is not even in possession of herself, who has nothing of her own, and who all her life has been trained to extricate herself from the arbitrary by ruse, from constraint by using her charms?... As long as she is subject to man’s yoke or to prejudice, as long as she receives no professional education, as long as she is deprived of her civil rights, there can be no moral law for her!”
—Flora Tristan (1803–1844)