As a kid ,every summer had something to look forward to and this came in the form of a soccer tournament for local children.For one weekend we were given the name of a soccer club or country and we played as if we represented the actual team.I entered it as a player about four times and won it once with Cadiz,a now defunct Spanish club so when I seen that they were recently looking to recruit managers for this years tournament I agreed to do it.This basically involved me setting up the goals at ridiculous o clock on a Saturday and Sunday morning,training them and making sure they had fun.
I was given Portugal,7 boys and 2 girls all under 14.Our first match was on Friday at 6.30 against Denmark.We got off to a flyer scoring 2 goals in 4 minutes and eventually ran out 4-0 winners.The Saturday turned out to be a less successful day in more ways then one.After the previous nights demolition of Denmark the organiser's insisted I swap one of my best players for a ,well , not so good player.We played Russia and lost 4-3 with the winning goal scored by the player I had swapped.
However that was not the sour point of the evening.It just happened to be 'kick rascism out of football' week and also 'respect the referee' week too.The local newspapers were here and we had just kicked off when a tackle was made by one of the black players on my team,it wasn't a dirty challenge,more clumsy but the other kid got up called him a nigger and kicked 7 shades of shite out of him right in front of the newspaper camera's.He was sent off and then proceeded to throw punches at the referee,I think he had misread the principles of the theme of the week!!
Our final match was on Sunday morning and we needed a win against Holland to reach the final.This game was played in better spirits and we ran out 4-0 winners.The final was being played at 1pm and quite a crowd turned up.I used a bit more tactical preperation for this game as I was now hell bent on winning this tournament,its all about taking part my arse I wanted to gloat and so I did when we won 4-2 against Chech republic.When the kids went up to collect their winners medals it brought me back to when I was a kid playing in these finals and one thing can be sure,this maybe the last time some of these kids win anything for football but it will only be the start of things to come for some too.
