Wednesday 01 / May / 2024
“Come on guys, focus!” roars Chuck Martini. The under-10s are lining up at the Royal Flight School, which is bathed in a yellow hue, the windows glinting in the last light of the setting sun. A young boy, tall, rangy, dribbles the ball past a couple of cones on the perfectly manicured pitch before attempting to plant a shot beyond Martini.
The former Leicester City goalkeeper may be forty-four, but he doesn’t seem to have lost any of his cat-like reflexes. He flings his burly body to palm away the boy’s determined drive.
“Still can’t beat me, can you?” he shouts, his face cracking into a grin. The boy turns around with a rueful smile, the sun’s rays lighting his hair a blinding platinum.
Chuck Martini’s professional career spanned 20 years across clubs such as Tottenham Hotspur, AFC Wimbledon, and of course, Leicester City. The highlight of his time as a player saw him represent Morocco at the 1994 World Cup in the United States, where grassroots football was just beginning to bear fruit.
Now he’s sowing the seeds for a new crop of next-gen stars in the Sultanate of Oman, at the Muscat Football Academy, established in 2013, which has since grown from 40 players to more than 400.
“I love this country, and I want to see football develop here. It’s been a lot of hard work, we have a great coaching team and I owe a lot to my backroom staff because they’re the ones doing all the hard work. It’s been a long three years,” he explains, eyes never leaving the field where his players train. “The most important approval is from the parents, entrusting me with their children and entrusting our methods and our techniques to improve their children.”
The pitch at the Royal Flight School is split into three sections. While Chuck works on the players’ finishing, his other coaches are honing the kids’ passing and defensive techniques. The sun blazes with fierce intensity, but that does little to deter the players on the field, some of whom are as young as three.
The Muscat Football Academy currently operates out of three schools in Muscat – the American British Academy, The Sultan’s School, and the Royal Flight School, but Chuck has long-standing plans for a project that would leave long-term impact on football in the Sultanate.
“We have a dome project in place in Mawaleh,” he explains. “It will feature an indoor 11-a-side football pitch as well as outdoor training pitches. That will be our main base, and I am hoping by 2017 to have opened my first base in Sohar.”
He is looking to establish a training quadrangle in the Sultanate, with academies planned in Muscat, Sohar, Nizwa, and Salalah.
“Our academy is not just about development, not just about the elite,” he says. “There are a lot of children who want to come here and play football to have fun. The most important thing is that while they are working hard and doing their exercise that they enjoy doing it.”
Martini may be scouting local talent, but he’s got his finger very firmly on the international pulse of football. He took the Muscat Football Academy to the world-famous Mundialto Tournament in Portugal for the first time earlier this year, where they competed along with some of football’s best and brightest. Borussia Dortmund, Inter Milan, Juventus, Schalke 04 Real Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Ajax, and Mexican outfit Club America were just a handful of clubs that featured. And the Muscat Football Academy progressed all the way to the quarterfinals of the silver division at the tournament.
“I’ve been lucky that we were invited to the Mundialto this year, rubbing shoulders with some of the best academies in the world. That has put our academy in a different light all together,” Martini explains. “Tournaments like the Mundialto will always be crucial to a child’s sporting development,” he says, signalling for the players to take a break and grab a drink. “On the pitch, they’re taught professionalism, they see how kids in other academies learn about moving, controlling, passing the ball, there’s so much for the kids to learn and see.” And the education doesn’t end with the game.
“I recall Borussia Dortmund travelling with us to a game. In the beginning, it was just bunch of kids sitting at the back listening to music in their earphones and then, 15-minutes before we arrived at the stadium, not the coach, but the actual captain said, ‘everybody switch off and get your game head on now’. I was shocked to see such impeccable manners from the rest of the team, because they’re only 10 years old and they play for one of the giants of world football, but they are so humble when you speak to them,” he recalled. “To see that was very educational and it’s made my players more aware. It made them realise how hard they have to work and how disciplined they have to be to be a professional footballer.”
Drink-time over, Martini gestures for his players to resume training. His rolling, booming voice does get loud, but that’s as far as it goes. No shouting is necessary.
Bright orange rays now pierce the low cloud cover, Martini squints into the light. “Unfortunately, people are so result orientated that parents feel their child should win at all costs,” he continues, stopping only to blow his whistle to bring into line two players who’ve begun an animated conversation — I think it was about cartoons — on the sidelines. “It’s not about results at such a young age. I’ve always wanted to see their faces when they win, but it’s about teaching my players the right way to play.”
Chuck is working hard to ensure that the kids have a future, even if it is off the pitch, with talks currently underway to create a football scholarship programme in partnership with the University of Connecticut in the United States.
Here in Oman, he’s hoping to strike a deal with Omantel, current sponsors of the Oman Premier League, to create an academies league to serve as a platform to discover and nurture talent.
“When you are put in front of some of the elites, it is a tough challenge, and not everyone is capable of it,” he says, waving the kids over, wrapping up his practice. “But my promise to all of my players is that if I see you have what it takes to play professional football, I will try to fulfil your potential.”—[email protected]
