I arrived back safely from the States and things have gotten back into a routine here. All the kids were excited to see me on Thursday and cheered as I arrived (it was a good thing I bought sunglasses so they couldn't see the solitary tear it produced). Both Tuesday and Thursday everyone looked sharped in practise and on Saturday everyone did well in the Streets Cup league games. I even tried stepping out onto the field Saturday to help the under - 15 team. We did well at first, going up on the best team 1 - 0, before my lack of having done any real exercise in awhile caught up to me and they started to kill us.
Have started buying shoes for those who have done the best as far as attendance and effort goes and will continue awarding players in the coming weeks. Only a few of them have shoes and even less have shoes for football so it's exciting. Some of them play in bare feet, some play in regular shoes and some even try and share football shoes (like one will wear the right shoe in a pair and another will wear the left).
I remember reading a bio on Pele once and he was talking about how it was hard, for he and his friends from the streets, to adjust to playing in shoes from barefeet when they started playing in real leagues.
Also keep in mind one player in particular who has starting slacking on coming to practise. I just hope everything is alright for him.
The kid I was talking about last time with the hurt foot says it is feeling better, so that's good.
Anyway thanks for checking in and talk at you next week.