It's always easier if you have the support of your family if you're not alone. I came from a country that has been through a lot of troubles in the last 20 to 30 years but we have been through them together.
If you have only one passion in life - football - and you pursue it to the exclusion of everything else it becomes very dangerous. When you stop doing this activity it is as though you are dying. The death of that activity is a death in itself.