First week in Mozambique

Freshly arrived from our long, long, long journey, we discover the GDM place where we would be staying for the next few months. Exhausted like never in our lives but happy to finally reach out our destination, we were just thinking about one thing as long as GDM people showed us around the facilities, SLEEP.. and EAT. Or EAT and SLEEP. Can’t remember in which order. After getting some time to chill, shower and change, we realized that we were starving, we headed out to the nicest restaurant in Manica. That’s where we met the delight known as Manica beer.

After a long night of rest under 25 degrees in the rooms, we got to meet a lot of the professional players living at GDM’s. They are around 8 to live full time at the club, training for the first team, working for the community. In parallel of being a part of the club, GDM’s players have to work at the Futeco Park. An initiative very rare in Mozambique.

That community turns around the Futeco Park with gardening’s and the construction of a nice new pitch for the first team to play on. However, the project is much bigger than only this but I will explore it in a future post.

Still in the adaptation phases, we find out the difference of temperature between Johannesburg and Manica. The suffer is even more real under about 30°C of a burning sun that let no chance to our Europeans body systems. Except Armando is ahead of us and used to it thanks to his US/Mexican origins.

However, our love for football calls us. So, off we go to the Futeco Park to play on the best 5-a-side pitch you could ever see.

Yeah, we play there couple of times a week from 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM.

Living at GDM’s for about a week now, we are constantly in touch with the locals, the players and everyone who works there. The more time we spend chilling out of our rooms, sitting on the common table, the more we have the feeling that GDM is a big family through football. That power of unity thanks to sports and particularly football is the most important point of it, far away from the big money.

This big family starts the day at 6:30 AM with the U17’s training and then at 8:00 AM, the first team takes over. Once football is done for the day, everyone go back at the club to shower, chill out, listen some good music and wait for lunch. By the way, they are big Justin Bieber’s fans…

After lunch, this is rest time. Then, around 4:00 PM, GDM is driving us around Manica to lead football session for kids with some of the first team players. During that first week, we just watched and played with the kids to see how it looked like. On Friday, first team coach, “Pingie” gave us a schedule for these sessions in the Manica Community.

Around 6:30 PM, we are generally back at the Club for some free time before dinner with the players. The after dinner is also very nice to spend time with the players, talk to them, get to know them, laugh and share stories.

But let’s get back to why we are in Manica with Arsenal in the first place : coaching and playing football. After two days of 5-a-side football at the Futeco Pitch, Monday and Tuesday, James and I decided to take part in the first teams training. As we expected, the heat and the intensity of a Mozambican session made us suffer physically. We had to do sit-ups, headers laying faced down on the floor, jumps with headers challenges, sides-steps and then volley right-left foot, some intensive defensive movement to finish with a shooting exercise. Each exercise was about ten minutes. Enough time to sweat and work hard …

This training was not something insurmountable as I have already been through a couple of pre-seasons training but the ocher, the dust and the tireless heat of the sun made it very difficult to handle. As a matter of fact, while I was drinking 4 times, the players were only drinking once. I do not have a clue how can they not be thirstier.

Taking part of this training was also very useful to analyze the needs, the strengths and the weaknesses of the Mozambican football. Coaching the U17’s the next day just confirmed what we thought about it. Not that we have seen a proper match but as far as we experienced it, Mozambican football is very physical around challenges. Lots of players are running with the ball and trying to go as fast as they can in a situation to shoot. Good technically, they don’t use as much the plays without the ball.

From Wednesday to Friday, we had the same schedule. U17’s and first training in the morning, then coaching sessions with kids around Manica. On Saturday, we ended up helping at the ice cream factory owned by the club. With a huge speaker and some great songs, we packed the ice cream still in liquid stage in plastic bags. In an hour, we finished our work and went back at GDM’s. Later in the afternoon, we played 5-a-side football at the Futeco Park pitch.

On Sunday, rest day for everyone and bid weekend in the Premier League with some title deciders matches : Arsenal – Leicester and Manchester City – Tottenham.

In the crowded GDM’s bar, We watched Arsenal beat Leicester City 2-1 at the Emirates after a fantastic game. The Gunners took the 3 points with an incredible fairy tale from Danny Welbeck. Injured for 9 months, the striker is launched by Arsene Wenger at the end of the game. Time for him to score one of the most important goal of the season. James and I went absolutely crazy for about 5 minutes. What a feeling. In the other fixture, Tottenham beat Manchester City 2-1 away to keep the suspens at its peak. Leicester, Tottenham and Arsenal have only 2 points difference now. The title battle just began.

#Mozambique