International Football: My Experience Part II
Credit:
Last week in my column I relayed how it occurred that I ended up accepting the invitation to represent the Libyan national football team. Continuing on from last week as promised, I will detail my experiences of actually going over to Libya for the first time and playing in an international game for the first time.
As I stated last week, a new experienced Brazilian coach by the name of Marcos Paqueta took over the reins of the Libyan national football team last summer. He was given the responsibility of getting Libya to the 2012 African Nations Cup that is to be held in Guinea and Gabon. The qualifying group that Libya is in consists of Mozambique, Comoros Island and the favourites to win the group Zambia. Only the winners of the group go through.
Having had a decent enough start to the campaign drawing 0-0 away to Mozambique in the opening group game last September, we faced a tough task of hosting Zambia in Tripoli. It was that game in October of last year where I received my first international call up for Libya. I was playing with Sporting Fingal at the time and it was them who received a fax from the Libyan Football Federation inviting me up to represent the national team in the upcoming international qualifier against Zambia. I was absolutely thrilled with the call up and the opportunity to play in an African Nations Cup group qualifier game was extremely exciting and an opportunity that I was never going to turn down.
However I was to run into problems from my current employers who didn’t actually want me to go. Prior to being called up I had a slight injury that had kept me out of the week s previous fixture. It was only a niggle and I knew that I would be ok and there was no way something so slight was going to stop me from going over and representing Libya.
Nevertheless, there were people at my former club who were determined to try to stop me from going over. I won’t name names but they know who they are and they should be ashamed of themselves. They even had the audacity to question my commitment to Fingal and they continued to accuse me of being selfish and of letting the team down.
It’s ludicrous to think that some people wanted to prevent me from representing Libya when a few weeks prior to my call up a few of the lads on Fingal got an u23 international call up for Ireland and nothing was said other than congratulations. I didn’t receive any congratulations from the club; the club whom I helped gain promotion and win the FAI Cup. Instead, on my return from international duty, I found out that I was to never kick a ball for Sporting Fingal again in what was a petty, childish and unspoken punishment handed out to me for choosing to represent my country.
Anyway, moving on, I travelled over to Libya for the Zambia game via first class flights with my Dad who came over with me as he didn’t want me to be alone there and to be honest, I felt a lot more comfortable with him being by my side the first time that I was going over. This was all very new to me at the time and I didn’t really know what to expect.
I knew that there was going to be that huge language barrier as I don’t know a lot of Arabic but obviously my Father does and he also knows Libya and Tripoli inside out. It was also going to be a very, very proud moment and my Dad was not going to miss that. I also have a lot of family based in Tripoli, my Dad comes from a huge family with seven sisters and three brothers and many kids between them. They were all very, very proud and ecstatic that I was due to play for the Libyan national team as it is a big honour especially in Libya where they are devoted to football.
In Libya, the main or basically only sport they play and support is football. In Ireland, we have GAA and Rugby along with athletics and other popular sports. Football is obviously huge here as well but multiply that popularity by at least three and you might get an idea of how much they love football over in Libya. Arriving at the airport in Tripoli I was greeted by a number of people from the press, news cameras were there along with representatives from the Libyan Football Federation. I had at least thirty relatives there as well, so to say it was a wee bit manic is an understatement. After an hour or so of getting through everyone I was rushed away by the LFF and taken to the team hotel where I was to meet my new international team mates and coaches for the first time. Scared, nervous and anxious were the emotions I was feeling at the time but it was to be one hell of a journey.
To be continued next week!
As I stated last week, a new experienced Brazilian coach by the name of Marcos Paqueta took over the reins of the Libyan national football team last summer. He was given the responsibility of getting Libya to the 2012 African Nations Cup that is to be held in Guinea and Gabon. The qualifying group that Libya is in consists of Mozambique, Comoros Island and the favourites to win the group Zambia. Only the winners of the group go through.
Having had a decent enough start to the campaign drawing 0-0 away to Mozambique in the opening group game last September, we faced a tough task of hosting Zambia in Tripoli. It was that game in October of last year where I received my first international call up for Libya. I was playing with Sporting Fingal at the time and it was them who received a fax from the Libyan Football Federation inviting me up to represent the national team in the upcoming international qualifier against Zambia. I was absolutely thrilled with the call up and the opportunity to play in an African Nations Cup group qualifier game was extremely exciting and an opportunity that I was never going to turn down.
However I was to run into problems from my current employers who didn’t actually want me to go. Prior to being called up I had a slight injury that had kept me out of the week s previous fixture. It was only a niggle and I knew that I would be ok and there was no way something so slight was going to stop me from going over and representing Libya.
Nevertheless, there were people at my former club who were determined to try to stop me from going over. I won’t name names but they know who they are and they should be ashamed of themselves. They even had the audacity to question my commitment to Fingal and they continued to accuse me of being selfish and of letting the team down.
It’s ludicrous to think that some people wanted to prevent me from representing Libya when a few weeks prior to my call up a few of the lads on Fingal got an u23 international call up for Ireland and nothing was said other than congratulations. I didn’t receive any congratulations from the club; the club whom I helped gain promotion and win the FAI Cup. Instead, on my return from international duty, I found out that I was to never kick a ball for Sporting Fingal again in what was a petty, childish and unspoken punishment handed out to me for choosing to represent my country.
Anyway, moving on, I travelled over to Libya for the Zambia game via first class flights with my Dad who came over with me as he didn’t want me to be alone there and to be honest, I felt a lot more comfortable with him being by my side the first time that I was going over. This was all very new to me at the time and I didn’t really know what to expect.
I knew that there was going to be that huge language barrier as I don’t know a lot of Arabic but obviously my Father does and he also knows Libya and Tripoli inside out. It was also going to be a very, very proud moment and my Dad was not going to miss that. I also have a lot of family based in Tripoli, my Dad comes from a huge family with seven sisters and three brothers and many kids between them. They were all very, very proud and ecstatic that I was due to play for the Libyan national team as it is a big honour especially in Libya where they are devoted to football.
In Libya, the main or basically only sport they play and support is football. In Ireland, we have GAA and Rugby along with athletics and other popular sports. Football is obviously huge here as well but multiply that popularity by at least three and you might get an idea of how much they love football over in Libya. Arriving at the airport in Tripoli I was greeted by a number of people from the press, news cameras were there along with representatives from the Libyan Football Federation. I had at least thirty relatives there as well, so to say it was a wee bit manic is an understatement. After an hour or so of getting through everyone I was rushed away by the LFF and taken to the team hotel where I was to meet my new international team mates and coaches for the first time. Scared, nervous and anxious were the emotions I was feeling at the time but it was to be one hell of a journey.
To be continued next week!
