Week 1 - Mozambique

Our first week in Manica and at Grupo Desportive De Manica football club (GDM) has been wonderful.

To be honest when we arrived in the evening at the clubhouse (where we would be living for the next 10 weeks) we were anxious. Stressed after a long journey, all sort of worries were going through our heads. In particular the threat of the mosquitos. We realised that we would need to adapt to the very different African environment and quickly.

However, after a good night sleep and introduction from our hosts we felt a lot better about it all and were ready to face the challenges ahead.

In our first few days we have explored the city of Manica. Instantly we felt a great vibe from this charming small town, close to the Zimbabwe border. The town is surrounded by picturesque mountains either side of the main road, making for an incredible landscape. Even better than the landscape though is the personality of the inhabitants. This is despite the fact that the majority of the town are very poor and have little to live on.

Walking through the town everyone would say hello to us and ask us how we are. I tried to reply in poorly pronounced Portuguese. It’s obvious to see how important community is to these people, which is very humbling to see.

On the coaching side, it has been a great start. GDM are professional football club in the second division of Mozambique. Mine and Albin’s first session involved us taking the u17s sessions, these players are aiming to join the first team in the future. Using demonstrations and having some help with translations from their coach we are managing to get past the language barrier. The coach was very pleased with our sessions. We focussed on their movement off the ball, using attacking combination play.

We have also helped out Pingy, who is the coach of the first team. In fact me and Albin took part in one of the first team pre season training sessions. Our fitness was put to the test, as we did circuit training, always with the ball though. I would be lying if I said we didn’t struggle. It’s been great fun chilling with some of the first team players who are living with us at the clubhouse when not coaching.

In future posts I will explain more about the community work that GDM does and what we are doing to help. That’s enough from me though for now.

Oh and I am writing this after Danny Welbeck has just scored a winner in the 95th minute against Leicester. UP THE ARSENAL!!!!!!!

#Mozambique