Looks like Pak talent is well appreciated in the land of the football World Champions, Brazil. Mind I don’t blame then for not wanting to play for a scabby club like Leeds United. It’s not like anybody else does either, Leeds playing staff are knocking each other over in the rush to get out of the door:
Akram brothers earn chance in Brazil adventure
By Peter Lansley
THE rain was lashing down on the playing fields of Roundhay Park yesterday and Copacabana Beach seemed light years away, but Irfan and Mohammed Akram, a pair of teenage brothers from Leeds, are on their way to Brazil.
The Akram boys, having just completed their A-levels, have signed a year’s contract with Resende, a professional club based an hour from Rio de Janeiro, and will fly out to start training with the youth squad on July 20.
On the day David Beckham formally teams up with Ronaldo at Real Madrid, these graduates of the Brazilian Soccer School in Leeds are preparing for a globetrotting adventure of their own. They hope to make a career in professional football and not necessarily in England, where they moved with their family from Pakistan in 1994.
Their departure is less to do with the negligible proportion of Asian players progressing to the professional game in England and more the style of play they have been brought up with at Simon Clifford’s Futebol de Salão (FDS) school during the past four years.
Jairzinho, the 1970 World Cup winner and a contact of Clifford, was among those greeting the Akram brothers when they paid their own way to Rio last summer to experience FDS, a five-a-side game with a hard, size-two ball that barely bounces, in its homeland. The boys impressed sufficiently to earn a trial with Resende, leading to the offer of a year-long arrangement. Irfan, 19, and Mohammed, 18, have deferred their places on offer at Leeds University, pending their A-level results, until October 2004.
Clifford, a former primary school teacher who now has more than 400 football schools operating across Britain, choreographed the football scenes in the film Bend It Like Beckham. Yesterday, he returned to the park opposite Roundhay School, where he started his first FDS class with four children in 1996, to wish the Akram brothers the best of luck.
Irfan, who was on the books of Farsley Celtic, the Unibond League club, last season, said: “FDS has provided us with the platform for our skills to develop. The 11-a-side game, though, is what football is all about. Now when you get a big ball, in a big space, with a big goal, it seems easy. We are really excited about this opportunity.”
So what will they do if Leeds United come calling? “It depends on what happens in Brazil. We’d prefer to do well there,” Irfan said.