Yesterday morning, the New Zealand team, Auckland City, held a training session on one of the subsidiary stadiums in the capital, Abu Dhabi, which it arrived at the evening before yesterday, after a 17-hour flight, in preparation for the anticipated match that will bring it together next Sunday with the Al Ain team at Hazza Bin Zayed Stadium, in the first round of the Confederations Cup (Intercontinental).
The team’s coach, Albert Riera, said on his official Instagram account in a video clip from the training session that the temperature is high and that they will work on adapting, adding: “This is not the first time we have trained in such heat. As I said, we have to adapt, and we cannot complain about it. The hotel and training facility are very good.”
As Auckland City’s players kick the ball around during their short training camp in Abu Dhabi before heading to Al Ain, their minds are on their jobs in New Zealand. Most of the players are amateurs, working full-time jobs during the week and pulling on the team jerseys at the weekend for matches.
Auckland City’s top recruits include Ryan de Vries, a store manager, Angus Kilcoly, a painter, Dylan Manicum, an engineer’s assistant at a metalworks company, and Gerard Garriga, who works two jobs as a waiter and babysitter, while others work as carpenters, electricians, plumbers and in technology companies, with some players still studying.
De Vries is well aware of the sacrifices that it takes to balance a full-time job with a football career. “I work as a warehouse manager, I start work at 8am and go to 4pm or 5pm, then I go to training and get home by 6pm. I usually get home at 8pm or 9pm, four days a week, plus games at the weekend,” he told FIFA.com.
“I’m a project manager for a paint company and my day starts early, I’m on site at 7am and I’m there until about 4pm, then I go to training, I do that four times a week and then I play a game at the weekend,” Angus Kilcoly, a paint specialist, also told FIFA.com.
Kilcoly said that while playing for Auckland City at the Club World Cup in Saudi Arabia, he used all his holidays for football trips. “I don’t get any other holidays,” he said. “I saved some money and my boss was really good about the rest, giving me paid time off. My boss knows these tournaments are a dream come true, so he’s been really good about it. I’m very grateful.”
Dylan Manicum, 31, spends his weekdays in steel-toed boots, a high-visibility vest and a hard hat, working from early morning until late afternoon as an assistant engineer making locks. He quickly goes from his day job straight to his evening job, training five nights a week and also playing futsal.
“I work for an engineering company from 7 or 8 in the morning until 4 in the afternoon,” Dylan Manicum told Friends of Football in a previous interview. “I’m an assistant site engineer and we do mostly metal work making locks. I help the site manager and engineer with quality assurance most of the time and I got the job through someone at the club.”
“They are very good with me, we usually have a game on Saturday, if it is Sunday we have training on Saturday as well. That is pretty much my week, from 7am to 8.30pm before I go home.”
“As for the National Futsal League, it takes place from February to April, during the pre-season of football. I am very lucky because the coach is great and supports me a lot in playing futsal. I train twice a week, but sometimes I have to miss football for futsal at critical times, but for the rest of the year we have double training sessions on the weekend every other week.”
For his part, Gerard Garriga explained in an interview with the Egyptian website “FilGoal” before the clash between his team and Al-Ahly in the 2023 Club World Cup, that he works two jobs as a waiter and a babysitter, and said: “The majority of the players, or even all of them, except for those who study, work as painters, electricians, plumbers, and in technology companies.”
The New Zealand Football Association rules state that players are either professionals or amateurs. Amateurs are defined as players who do not receive more than their expenses, up to a maximum of $150 per week, and one-off prize money for winning a tournament or reaching a certain level. They must sign an agreement with their club stating that they abide by the amateur rules, and that the agreement must be lodged with the Football Association.
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