Tom Brady retires: The rise and success of seven-time Super Bowl winning quarterback

Not all sporting greats are spotted early, not every sporting legend is earmarked at a young age, and that was certainly the case with a certain Tom Brady.

Brady retires aged 44, with seven Super Bowls across three decades and every quarterback record in the book. He's a living legend, the widely proclaimed GOAT (greatest of all time) of not just the NFL but even in the entire sporting world. But it has not come easy.

While a child prodigy like Tiger Woods hit the ground running and was winning the Masters at 21, Brady had to really fight just to get into the NFL — after having to scrap and claw just to get a game for the University of Michigan in his college days, but just like Tiger he would eventually go on to be the name synonymous with his sport.

At a now legendary yet laughable physical display at the NFL Combine — when college players show off their skills in front of NFL scouts — Brady produced a 40-yard sprint barely worthy of the name, moving his awkward and lanky frame at the speed of a glacier.

In the 2000 NFL Draft that followed, when the 32 NFL teams pick the cream of the college crop to bolster their squad, Brady was a sixth-round selection and the 199th overall pick. An afterthought, a punt by the New England Patriots on a possible back-up quarterback.

It was that snub, those comments on every aspect of him by talent scouts, that directly led to Brady becoming who he is today.

They fed the hunger, the desire to win and prove everyone wrong — they placed the biggest chip of all time onto the shoulder of the greatest of all time, a shoulder that would go on to lift the Super Bowl more times on his own than any single team has ever managed in their history.

Ask anyone who's played with or worked with Brady