Five months have flied by, D day is getting close and we feel we’re just not quite ready to leave Congo. Not yet. It is by now we are getting settled, we know what are the expectations every training, which bus to take, which player is really injured or just complaining because he/she is tired. All these small things that make you feel you are home, are the things we feel right now. But this letter is not going to be about the sad part of soon leaving Congo and how little time we have left, it is going to be about things that we have experienced the past month and that we will remember when we get back to (right now) cold Sweden.

Getting ready for training

In the beginning of january we’ve had elections of team captain for each category. This is something that the players have voted for and most of the chosen ones see this as a great honor even if this means more responsibility. The captain is responsible of the warm ups, getting the team together and other small team responsibilities. When we asked who wanted to be  a captain this coming season, almost all the players lifted a hand a shouted ME! ME!. It became a bit of a chaos and we had to calm everybody down and repeat the question and after a while we had 4 nominees. Then again we had to do the voting to choose a captain and an assisting captain, finally after a a couple of times trying to do it as calmly as possible, we had a Captain and assisting captain.

The kids here love to play football, there is no doubt about that, but sometimes they can also be very lazy. The training theme during january has been fitness and in the coming month we will be practicing technique. Somehow, as soon as we get to an exercise that is a bit more demanding, there is always someone that comes to us and complaints about their foot or something else and that they cannot do this exercise. They can then ask if we have some medicine to help them get better and i would ask them if the pain is that bad that they have to interrupt the training and in that case they will not be able to play the game at the end of the training, suddenly the pain is not an issue anymore and they go back to the training as if nothing happened. It seems i have some amazing healing forces with some of my words…

We continue with technique exercises in march as well. We have also decided to work with the players positioning. This is something we notice during Gothia Cup and also here during the games. The kids have good techniques but also difficulties knowing their positions and respecting their and the other players’ positions. We will then practice different situations such as: Who am i going to pass to? and What do i do after i have passed the ball?

In the end of march we will also start playing games against other teams, it will be fun to watch the kids use their football knowledge and see them competing.

Greetings from us football volunteers – via Simon