“And Sherife’s getting over-excited!”

Yep that’s right we’re back and haven’t gone missing in action here in Mozambique! First things first, we apologise for taking so long to blog but it’s through no fault of our own. The rest of the world seems a very distant place as of 2 and half weeks ago when our internet connection was lost at sea. Well not sea but more due to financial crisis. Therefore we have found an internet café (more large room with 4 computers in it) on the main road and trudge up and down in hope of using the internet. The problem is that only 2 of these 4 computers have internet and the whole of Manica appears to use them, all of the time! The other issue is that the boss only opens from 9 until 12, closes for a 3 hour lunch (he has to cook his sadza which is quite a patient process we’ve been told) and then only opens until 4.30pm. Sadza remember is that maize type food which actually tastes of nothing! Therefore a challenge to say the least to actually get access to emails, social networking and most importantly blogging!

Arsene Scholes in action!

Now we may come across as if we’ve gone mad from our title of this post but our inspiration comes from some fantastic commentary work by Trev and Trev (they’re our commentary names for comedic and confidential effect). It all happened whilst filming the GDM first team match with Vumba, in which Flex scored an absolute wonder goal to level the tie to 1-1. We caught the action on film and as the El Hajj Diouf look alike ran to the bench to celebrate, we noticed the physio getting very carried away and dancing in front of the crowd. As soon as we saw this we both shouted in tandem, “and Sherife’s getting over excited, he can’t contain his sheer joy”! We must also let you know that Sherife is GDM’s biggest fan (as well as physio/ believer in hot water and salt to heal every injury going) and is a very happy, excitable chap to be around at the club. His trademark is his beaten up old bike from the 1970’s which has no gears, a broken seat and no brakes. We tried riding it but the pedals were so heavy we couldn’t get the thing to move. When he rides it however, he must hit about 100 mph using the soles of his feet to stop it! So we’re not crazy (just yet) but having a very fun time indeed.



Sherife's beast of a bike, modelled nicely by Will

Further to the 1-1 with Vumba in the league, the week before was also against the ‘moody spurs’ outfit in the Manica province cup final. It was always going to kick off between the wannabe Arsenal and Tottenham, with the fans at each others throats all week in the streets. The game started in quite a relaxed, pleasant fashion with Vumba taking the lead early in the first half. However mass mayhem broke out when just before half time the referee awarded GDM with a penalty for a blatant hand ball (although we were at the other end of the pitch, so no bias involved what so ever). The Vumba fans turned violent! In an act of protest they decided to throw rocks, gin bottles and whatever else was on them at the time (one guy even threw a baby) at the linesman and also started hurling abuse at us the GDM fans. It must be noted that most of the Vumba fans are alcoholic including Snoop drunk who we mentioned before and a guy who runs up and down continuously shouting “VUMBA LEOS, VUMBA LEOS”. He then does a very impressive Triple H impression by pouring a whole bottle of Vumba water over his head and falling over, before getting up and repeating the whole process again. The players at the club love Meggo’s impression of the Vumba Leos guy and constantly repeat it over and over again! Anyway from there the game went to extra time with the officials giving everything to Vumba and nothing to GDM in order to get home to their families alive that night. GDM had 2 stone wall penalties turned down before Vumba were awarded a very weak one in extra time, winning the game 2-1 and cheating their way to the cup. They now enter a national Mozambique cup which would’ve been a great opportunity for our boys, but not to be.

The mental Vumba fans rioting the pitch!

The final first team action was against bottom of the league Vanduzi. We went expecting an 8-0 drumming and 20 minutes in it looked possible as we went 2-0 up with goals from Mario (Lionel Messi) and Simozinho (moody Ronaldinho). However another refereeing howler (you can see a pattern repeating here can’t you?) gave the opposition a penalty for a header inside the box by Maninho (the Virgin who’s got a kid) which was thought by the ref to be a hand ball. The game struggled on and finished 2-1 to GDM but they were disrupted by poor managerial decisions by Miguel ‘Moriniho’, oh and the ref obviously didn’t help either!

Anyway after all the excitement of the first team’s action, we have also been busy working hard with the children and first team players themselves. We’ll start with the palaver that was ‘International Children’s Day’, although we’ve never heard of this day in England! It was a carnival like atmosphere with flags put up lining the streets, children off school and running riot everywhere, and music blaring out of every building (you would have thought that old Guebuza the president was visiting, oh wait that’s a story for a bit later). Considering it was probably the busiest day in the towns history, Pingi (Pingu, our head of youth operations at the club and usually makes sure we get to sessions ok) then decided he had to swan off to Chimoioi to do some sort of document in which he wouldn’t divulge into. This meant we had the challenge of using the ‘deathtrap’ that is the taxi-bus service to get to Anda orphanage alone. This is a very scary experience considering we are the only mzungo’s (white people) in Manica and don’t speak a word of Portuguese!

Academicas doing relays

However we made it alive and thought the hard work was over, how wrong we were. When we got there we were greeted by a man we nicknamed one leg Paul (because he’s only got 1 leg) and little snot-nose who we can’t determine if is a boy or girl due to clothing confusion. We were invited into their children’s day rave where music was pumped up to a ridiculously high level and a man on a microphone (MC waist coat, or to be honest waste man) offering lollipops to the best dancers. After this commotion one leg Paul (his real name Sandro) led us outside for some party drinks. We assumed this would be a Coke or fizzy Fanta, again how wrong we were! The vile concoction he brought us was cold, lumpy sadza liquid which tasted alcoholic. However the kids seemed to enjoy them, which is the most important thing. We took one sip before throwing up our breakfast (which ironically looked like someone had done before us into the cup)! We quickly gave our Sadza cocktails away!

MC Waistcoat's children's day bonanza!

We then were informed by Paul, sorry Sandro that we were refereeing two 90  minute games for the older girls and then boys of the orphanage against a local school. So what was planned to be an hour’s session soon turned into a day’s events, with Pingi in Chimoioi doing his document! It was great to see the orphans in-particular having such a fantastic day with the boys even winning their game (the girls got smashed though, with Meggo awarding the opposition a penalty to make the game more interesting, although it was 4-0 already at that point). In the past 2 weeks we have started playing mini-tournaments/matches at the orphanage separating the young ones and the older kids. One match of note was a 9-8 thriller with Will’s team victorious and Meggo’s losing out. Will scored a stunner which in-fact was meant to be a cross and ended up lobbing the keeper. As us coaches say, “You put the fruit in the mixer, and out comes a smoothie!” Again Pingdog wasn’t present, he claimed he was doing the same document in Chimoioi- again.

The thrilling orphanage game

We’ve been working vigorously with the under 17’s in the early morning sessions, and are finally starting to see some results. This is also true of the girls who have won 2 games out of 3 and we acclaim that to our excellent technique training. This is tremendous out here as previously they had never won a competitive match and now they are doing reasonably well in the league. The biggest highlight was our U17’s beating the moody spurs (you know who they are by now) 4-1, with a performance of sheer class and tenacity. The warm up master class we gave them for 30 minutes before the game was the real difference and meant we took a 3-0 lead inside 20 minutes. Apart from one glitch in defence, we were completely dominant and impressed the crowd of at least 15, in this early morning meeting. So us and Hardlife (David really) are working our magic and gaining from our great investment of effort.

Under 17's smashing the 'Moody Spurs' U17's

However our under 16’s are not quite firing on all cylinders as of yet. They have played 3 games in the league and are yet to win a game. They drew the first 2-2, coming back from 2-0 down. The next two games though were dismal performances, although they were up against better teams technically and physically. We will continue working hard with Chibanga (Chitty Chitty Chibanga- a first team player) to get better results before we return home.

Chitty Chitty Chibanga and mini- Chitty Chibanga

Our other, less competitive sessions with the younger kids are also going very well. We’ve introduced compulsory celebrations to winners of our various competitions which we overload the session with. For example new ones we didn’t mention last time are the David Villa bow, the Arshavin shoosh finger, the Peter Crouch robot which Meggo loves demonstrating and has forced it upon every child he has met, Gyan dancing, the Brazil World cup winning team of ’94 rocking the baby and finally the Robbie Keane cartwheel. We have also started making the mini-matches at the end of each session more fun, such as the coconut shy game where the players must knock a ball off a cone to score a goal, stopping the ball on the line and the conventional smashing the ball into a goal method. We’re also passing on the skills we learnt from the story telling course (thanks John) back in London, giving teams names and imaginative trophies to win. Normally this is a cone we pick up, give to them and they hold aloft victoriously. Sadly Arsenal never does too well in these competitions and by some strange coincidence it’s normally Man Utd vs Barcelona in the finals. Somehow Barcelona tends to win these!

Our little superstars in action at the Campo Municipal

We’ve also started getting used to the tiny areas of dirt which they call a football pitch and have many complications when walking across, let alone coaching on. One session we did actually have a car drive across us and Pingi informed us that this was a teacher leaving school. There’s also what we call ‘rivers’ on the pitches, actually just large dentures in the dirt which if you fall down, you disappear. The next problem arises when Hardlife and Pingi decide to let us communicate to the kids ourselves. This normally involves long demonstrations, hand gestures and long awkward silences. This then gets followed by chaos as they say they understand but then do the opposite. The other worrying thing is that the players translate what we say in English to the kids in Portuguese, but don’t speak English themselves. A splendid example of this is our friend ‘Cretin’ who Will asked if spoke English. He response was, “yes I speak perfect English.” This is about the only English we’ve managed to get out of him since, except when he sees us in the street and says “hello my friend” like every other person who sees us says. Thus the nick name Cretin was born. Plus he also looks like Plankton from Sponge Bob Square Pants!

Earthworm Jim and Will posing for the fans

The final highlight of our kid’s sessions is the African nation’s cup tournament we set up, with a final of Zimbabwe and Namibia. We played for an hour before it got dark and we assumed we’d stop the session and continue the next week. Again how wrong we were! Pingi was so enthusiastic as the linesman (on a 5 a-side pitch) that we played on into the dark and even did a penalty shootout in the final. After one penalty was taken it was so dark, we even lost the ball. Even this didn’t stop play and we continued until all 9 balls were lost. No really at least 3 were lost. Whilst we’re on the subject of missing balls (no not what you might think), we are now down to 7 footballs, which we share with 2 other coaches who have sessions at the same time. Quite difficult to plan sessions with about 4 balls for 30 + kids. It also doesn’t help when bibs (ok they are quite minging) are taken by mama out of our bag (Meggo’s hand luggage satchel) to be washed without us realising until we get to picking teams. However we have been promised the balls are on their way from Maputo, the capital. This was about 4 weeks ago though which is quite a concern seeing as that Maputo is 2 days journey away!

Hard Life in action at the smallest pitch in the worldddd (Jeremy Clarkson voice)

Away from our sessions, coaching course for the players and English lessons we mentioned last time and we are still continuing with, there are also some other random moments which have happened. Firstly and quite sadly our good friend Amade “Balotelli” has left the club. RIP. He has returned to his home after the manager and directors finally decided that he was of no use to the club, as all he did really was eat and sleep. However he claims he’ll be back next year for another crack at the big time, but hopefully his self proclaimed catch phrase of ‘1 chance, 1 goal’ will be a bit more accurate then! Moving on to more pressing issues, it has rained here for the first time and while we were coaching at that. We even had to pull out the old storm fit rain jackets (which aren’t water proof Arsenal) and it felt like we were both back at our schools in London. Apart from it still being very hot, it tipped it down, quite a nice sight! We’ve also pulled out secondary blankets for the evenings and mornings due to frost bite conditions. This also leads us onto a bit of a strange topic whereby we frequently speak to each other about random stuff while apparently asleep. Including Meggo asking Will who stole the toilet pipe and then claiming it was Maradona. Right before you jump to conclusions we haven’t gone crazy quite yet. Meggo was reading Maradona’s book before bed and that explains that. The toilet pipe is still a mystery however and it’s probably best it stays that way. The other interesting incident was when Meggo claimed he saw the security guard (the drunken one, not Chandle in the wind Chandulia) chasing a guy that was also being chased by a dog, away from stealing plates (yep sounds complicated but Meggo might have dreamt the whole thing anyway). The final incident involved a massive dog fight with at least 5 dogs, right outside our room. First mama’s friend dog Bobby then ‘apparently’ ran in and chased all the dogs away in different directions. Again quite weird we know!

Talking tic- tac tactics

Ok let’s not beat around the bush, it’s getting boring reading this and boring writing now so we’re going to finish on the greatest event Manica has ever seen. It was a fine Monday afternoon when President Armando Emilio Guebuza visited the town for a night. There was literally every single man, women, child and wild dog (even some Chinese people) lining the streets from 1pm in the afternoon awaiting the arrival of the great one. Although we didn’t see the great fuss when he arrived, he just looked like an old man with a flowery shirt. Anyway we waited 3 hours for him as in traditional Mozambique style he was fashionably late (fashionable being 3 hours minimum). So that was a historic occasion in our time here and one the people of Manica will never forget.

Finally we end on a more historic occasion. Meggo, after a 7 week stint, finally shaved the monstrosity that was his ginger goaty (well full on Father Christmas beard) off and Will shaved his hair, quite badly it must be said! It says a lot when you let another non-hairdresser person (Meggo) shave your hair. The trust level is phenomenal and didn’t pay off! Ok we’ll leave you on that bombshell, from Trev and Trev- Goodnight!

Costo Do Sol Kids loving Will