On December 1, insults to the referee are unacceptable. Bad player behavior will be penalized. Parents are put in the role of children. Bad fans are invited to leave the stands. There is training in Ethics and Sport and there are no costs with fines for bad sporting behaviour.
At the historic Sintra club, founded on December 1, 1880 (143 years ago), under the charter of King D. Carlos, and today holder of the record for titles in women’s football (a modality it hopes to recover one day), well sporting behavior starts with the leaders. And largely because of the arrival on the scene of Tasslim Sualehe, the SAD administrator, who believes in sports success without giving up values: “Is it rowing against the current? That’s it. But that’s not why our teams don’t win. With one of the lowest budgets in the Portuguese championship, the seniors are in 1st place in the Série C, the junior A team is fighting to move up to the Nationals, the youth team is fighting to move up to the 1st district, the initiate fights to rise to the Nationals,” defended the leader of the Sintra warriors since 2021.
The 2022-23 season began with training in Ethics and Sport for drivers, U-5 athletes, coaches and parents. “In one of the exercises, athletes from Under-10 to Under-17 had to guide their parents, who were blindfolded in front of them from a distance of about two meters, to walk towards them, go around an obstacle and give their follow directions everything is fine here When I later told them “Now all at once” it was chaos Of course it turned into a joke but the parents stuck to the essential: they couldn’t hear their son in the midst of the global noise And that’s what happens in a game when the coach wants to give an indication and the father gives instructions at the same time, one father says “on”, the other says “attack” and yet another says “go to the line”, not for the expression “It goes after him. This is multiplied by 15 or 20 parents and where the child has to abstract and listen to the coach,” he told DN Tasslim.
According to the director, it is enough to go to a training match to understand this “sad” reality, among many others, which only bring bad fame to the sport of kings. “A stadium is not an amphitheatre, nor is football like going to the theater every now and then [os familiares] they’re the only ones in the stands and without them the kids wouldn’t have any support, but in an Under-12 game hearing an excited grandfather call the referee for a possible penalty kick, what’s the point of that?” he asked, recalling the “bewilderment” of an American sports coach at the sight of two police officers in an Under-10 game: “This says a lot about how wrong we Portuguese are. Starting with us leaders. If it’s impossible , then take a more ethical sport? No.”
This ideal should involve everyone, from athletes to parents. “A boy who usually plays as a striker played the utmost in a game and when he switched to his usual position, he immediately scored a goal. The mother celebrated and was happy, but immediately shot: “Well, his position is a striker “. I was silent, but when I was training the boy I asked him what he was doing on December 1 and he replied that he was a “player”. I told him about his mother’s episode to figure that out to explain such comments can hurt him and that it is better to play on the wing than forward on the bench.”
But isn’t that too picky? Isn’t that a very banal comment? “Yes, but the coach is also human and can be influenced. After all, the comments come from the mother and can be seen as a reflection of the son’s complaints at home. In addition, they must know how to be available to play.” in any position and put the team above personal interests,” argued the leader, who sees pedagogy as a valuable working tool for leaders.
And experience helps. “Nobody gets a degree to be a dad. I’m a dad too, to former elite athletes, and I’ve made mistakes as a dad too. I’ve made a lot of mistakes, what I thought was bench motivation was bench disruption.”. I got nervous and they saw me smoking. I learned from the mistake, if I persisted in it it would be stupid and now I try to prevent others from commenting on it. Maybe my kids didn’t progress because of some behavior I had,” he admits, in a mea culpa from someone who understands parent supporters are an ambiguous case.
Insult is not support
Tasslim watches the matches amongst the supporters, in the refurbished 500-capacity December 1 stands, and has already lost count of the times he called attention to excessive attitudes or language and heard what he loved not like: “Num Under-12 game we lost to Atlético and an athlete’s mother turned to me and said: “Well, the others can put pressure on the referees, we can’t do anything”. I replied: “We lost because they scored more”.
The leader is fully aware of the scope of citizen intervention in the stands and how this is seen by some parents and supporters, but rejects the idea of being seen as a “dictator”. “I have been called crazy and other things, but my behavior will not change. I do not own all this, I am the president of SAD and fortunately the president of the club.” [Francisco Gomes] and the childhood friends who invested in the club with me share the same values. And if it’s not according to my principles, then I’m leaving.”
For someone who has invested thousands of euros in restoring a local club clearly struggling to survive, business doesn’t seem to be everything. In Sintra, Premier League policies are followed and penalties are imposed on supporters. One or two have already had to remind one or two that the show organizer reserves the right of entry, so if a fan misbehaves, they may be asked to leave the stadium (it’s already happened) and, if they insists on the error , prevented from entering.
That doesn’t mean fans, parents, coaches and players don’t outdo themselves time and time again. But if he uses pedagogy in the training, the conversation with seniors at Tasslim is different. “We played a game with the last placed team, in Arronches, we lost 2-1, and we were no longer leaders. We are not used to losing and at the end of the game there was huge confusion. The first thing I did in the next training session that he went and gathered everyone and said he couldn’t have that regrettable scene repeated and that Monday the street door was open.
Asks more of seniors because they “have to lead by example”. And the internal rules make it clear that the fines imposed on the club for bad behavior come out of the pockets of those who lash out. José Fortes, the goalkeeper coach, already got rid of one because of 30 years of ‘clean record’. “This also says a lot about the values of who we have chosen. It would be the first fine of the year, but they know that when they come it will be to debit their account,” the manager revealed, making sure he doesn’t get involved in coach Rui Maside’s work – “I’m not even asking to let my nephew play” [risos]. Also because a bad result can be tolerated, bad behavior is not: “I can’t have a coach on the bench yelling at the referee. If you do it once it will go through, twice maybe not…”
Fearless of opponents exploiting the courteous side of their teams, the December 1 SAD manager bets on emotional control and the professionalism of arbitration. And when the players open up about what they consider to be the referee’s mistakes, Tasslim Sualehe reminds them that the error is not exclusive to the referee, nor is he responsible for missed goals in front of goal.
Next is a partner: the dream of playing and studying in the USA
Mozambique-born Portuguese Tasslim Sualehe, now 54 years old, argues that speech should not be the exception, but the rule. He says it’s part of his training as a person and the sports culture he acquired in the US. He even played football, but when he told his mother that he wanted to leave school to become a football player, he almost got spanked. He continued to play hide and seek, graduated in management and invested in a computer company. And when he went to Brazil to help with a project for a company that developed websites for players, he saw some athletes invite colleagues to play in the US on a scholarship.
He had found the ideal way to stay connected with football without leaving his academic education and make his mother happy. He founded Next Level Sport, a company that has sent nearly 400 athletes to the US on scholarships. He tried to sell the idea to clubs, but mistrust was high and he felt the need to join a club – first with Abóboda, now with December 1.º.
Combining studies and football is the dream of many parents, but preferring an academic education after the age of 12 when a club offers a contract, which often exceeds the salary of the parents, is difficult to understand at 16 or 17 years. When Vicente Matheus was promoted to Sporting’s youth team, his father considered academic training more important. He was a student with a 19.9 at St. Julius and was awarded a scholarship to the University of Chicago – Top-3 in the world in Economics.
Then there are cases like that of Neemias Queta, where sporting success predominated. He went to Utah for college and ended up in the NBA. And João Moutinho, who went to college/play soccer in Ohio, finished No. provisional version 2018 from MLS and is now in Spezia (Italy). Or Maria Alagoa, who is college football champion for Florida State and Internacional Under-19.
Tasslim believes that academic training does not steal talent or opportunity. And he gives the example of his cousin, at Sporting, who, as a youth player and also playing in the juniors, leaned against the wall at one point to switch from face-to-face lessons to online lessons. “While it is fine that Sporting, Benfica and FC Porto say that studying is very important, they do so by giving up their studies and focusing only on football and telling them: ‘Either you invest everything in this or there you can’t get enough.” It is immoral, although I understand they are looking after the interests of the club and even the athletes and parents. But when we look at it, out of 20/30 athletes, only one or two end up being chosen and rewarded for that performance.”
And the data doesn’t lie. According to a 2019 study by the Polytechnic Institute of Bragança, only 58.5% of the 424 players from the I and II leagues and the I Liga Feminina who heard had completed high school. And of these, only 8.2% had a higher education.
Source: DN
