Early Years
Jermaine Pennant was born in The Meadows area of Nottingham, Nottinghamshire. His father was of Jamaican descent, his mother is British. His father Gary was a semi-professional footballer who inspired Pennant to play. His mother died from cancer when he reached three years of age. As a result, he helped raise his younger siblings, two sisters and one brother. Pennant recalls how as a child his favorite toy was a football, and how it rarely left his side.
Pennant, who grew up in a crime and drug infested neighborhood, credits football for saving him from a life of crime. When he was 14, he moved away from home and was living with YTS players who were 16,17, and 18. Notts County provided Pennant a safe haven.
Read more about this topic: Jermaine Pennant
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or years:
“I realized how for all of us who came of age in the late sixties and early seventies the war was a defining experience. You went or you didn’t, but the fact of it and the decisions it forced us to make marked us for the rest of our lives, just as the depression and World War II had marked my parents.”
—Linda Grant (b. 1949)
“In foreign policy you have to wait twenty-five years to see how it comes out.”
—James Reston (b. 1909)