Testimonial (a love letter to FC Siakasipa)

According to Wikipedia, a testimonial match is a match clubs typically grant to players upon reaching ten years of service with a club, although they are sometimes given to players with less service under particular circumstances such as approaching retirement. These matches are always non-competitive.

My stay in Siakasipa has not lasted for ten years. I’ve actually only been here for ten months, yet, this Thursday, the community football club honored me with a testimonial. I guess the reason I was granted one was one of those particular circumstances mentioned above; to put it in football terms, my contract with the club is about to expire, and I’m about to go back home to Norway.

I had requested that our opponents for my final match should be Buiketo. I wanted to play our neighbors from Buiketo mainly for two reasons; firstly, apart from Siakasipa, Buiketo is the village where I have conducted most of my work the past ten months. For such a special occasion as a testimonial, I could not think of a better team to play, as it is a community that has come to mean a great deal to me. Secondly, although a testimonial is supposed to be a friendly and non-competitive encounter, I wanted my last match in Zambia (for now) to be a competitive one. I suspected that Buiketo wanted to settle their scores with their rivals in Siakasipa, as the last match between the clubs had ended with a historic Siakasipa-victory. The match had been played at Buiketo’s home ground, and according to locals, it was the first time Buiketo had lost a home match.

My suspicions that Buiketo would not treat the game as a friendly, non-competitive match were confirmed as soon as the referee blew his whistle and started the game. To continue with the football terms, a welcome-to-England-tackle was (still is) a particularly rough tackle that was aimed to scare the opponents (often foreign) star-players out of the game. About ten seconds into the game, Buiketo’s right-back gave me what I would like to call a thank-you-for-coming-to-Zambia-tackle. It hurt, and I still have the marks from the right-back’s studs across my ankle. However, I got up and continued playing. I didn’t feel like I had much of a choice anyway. If I had limped off injured ten seconds into my own testimonial, it might have been dubbed the worst testimonial ever, even worse than Johan Cruyff’s.

Vinnie Jones giving Dennis Bergkamp a warm welcome to England

I won’t say much about the match. We won 3-1. For the last ten minutes or so, my head wasn’t even in the game. I was just jogging around the ground thinking about how much I have enjoyed coaching and playing with this wonderful group of people. Most of these guys aren’t using football to chase fame or fortune. Most of them are subsistence farmers, and they are happy where they are. Still, I have never seen players anywhere else play football with so much passion. I have never seen players anywhere else have so much fun for 90 minutes.

The former Liverpool-manager Bill Shankly’s greatest ambition was not to win trophies (although he did, and plenty of them), his greatest ambition was to make people happy. I’m sure Bill would be proud of you, because you sure made me happy. Thank you.