A guy’s how-to is a column where we hear from men who’ve lived it about how to tackle the tough things in life in the gentlest of ways. Jack Downer, who wows with his world-class football tricks and dribbles, is the first in this series.

Panna is a form of street football that is said to have originated in 2007 in Suriname, a South American country bordering northern Brazil. The aim of the game is to score as many goals against an opponent as you can within the three minutes each game is played for. But, if you’re able to pass the ball through your opponent’s legs (which you might know as a nutmeg, megs, peg, tunnel, or panna) then you automatically win. Right there and then. Even if it’s a second into the game. Technically, panna means knockout. As a result, in this world, nutmegs are king.

And the king of the nutmegs? Probably Jack Downer, 24, from England. You might know him as @streetpanna. He’s a two-time Superball World Panna Champion. When Jack started, about ten years ago, he reckons “maybe five people'' in the UK knew what panna was. Now, he alone has over 3.1m followers across his social media. He could probably nutmeg all of them. He’s even nutmegged Neymar Jr. Yeah, the one playing for PSG and leading the line for Brazil in the UEFA World Cup this year. Impressive, right?

Well there’s something more impressive about Jack. His determination. See, on on 6th June 2021, he collided with a goalkeeper during a charity match. The keeper’s knee hit his abdomen with such force that his liver “essentially exploded”, Jack says. It was lacerated, badly. He was placed into a coma and his family was told he was dying. And he was dying. The mortality rate for this type of injury is at least 80%, but his particular condition was very severe.

This wasn’t the first time Jack had had to recover and come back from injury. Injury had in fact killed him once before, at least professionally. At 14, he had ligament damage in his foot from being stamped on, and his knee also suffered. He was out of action for eight months and it stopped his chances at making it as a professional footballer, putting the brakes on interest in him from teams like Tottenham Hotspur and West Ham.

Still, while Jack Downer should probably be dead, this isn’t a sad story. Because he’s not sad about it. It took three months, two comas, nine pints of blood, and losing 12% of his bodyweight, but Jack is here with a big smile on his face, wondering about things like “setting up a camera to see what his dog gets up to when he leaves the house” and making jokes about us having a candle-lit interview.

He has high hopes for the future, dreams of becoming a boxer while retaining his world champion status in the panna world. We caught up with Jack at the Tate Modern, where Impulstar, an organisation focused on bringing football to underrepresented youth communities to provide them with a platform to showcase talent in front of professional players, coaches, music, artists and their community, were hosting their first ever UK edition of the event, supported by Instagram. It's part of Meta's commitment to shining a light on emerging talent and driving culture forward, online and irl, across dance, music, and the beautiful game.

Here’s what Jack had to teach us about his life so far.

How to overcome obstacles

“When I was 14 my mum tricked me into playing panna. I thought we were going for a walk, but she dropped me off at the town hall and I spent an hour being nutmegged by a kid a few years younger than me (I was 14, so a few years was a big difference). After the injuries put a stop to my career, I withdrew a little bit. I felt a bit lost now that becoming a professional 11-a-side footballer was over for me. But because I had a passion for training and growing and learning, applying that to street football quickly felt natural. What I'm saying is I ended up seeing my obstacle more as an opportunity to learn something new, to learn about something I was interested in, and develop my skills further. And I think we can take most obstacles to be a chance to learn and develop. We don't really get to grow without learning and facing new challenges.”

How to back yourself

“Street Football is all about identity. So in 11-a-side, I'd have been categorised as a defender, or a right back. But in street football it's just you. You wear what you want, you play how you want. So when most of the lads, my mates, were going through the 'who am I?' phase, and perhaps defining it on partying, or girls, or grades, I’ve had a good sense of who I am since I was about 14, maybe 15. As I’d expressed myself through sport. It gave me a lot of self-belief.”