WALJI LEADS AFRO TRADING TO RAMADAN FOOTBALL GLORY

A game report I wrote for the finals of an annual Ramadan indoor football tournament organized by my community here in Dubai.
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Dubai, Hussein Walji was once again the stand-out performer for Afro Trading as he put in a sublime effort over Altaf Karim’s Somji & Co in the finals of the Jaffery Ramadan Football Tournament.

The victorious Afro Trading squad

In a match dubbed by many as ‘Posta vs. Walji,’ the latter came out on top, leading his team from the front and beautifully setting up the only goal of the match.

“The performance overall of everybody from the team has been superb,” Walji said after the game.

“I cannot say enough how hard these boys have worked to come up – everybody from the youngest to the oldest member of our team has given their heart out and because of that we’ve managed to win.”

The finals were played over two halves of nine minutes in front of a full house at the Iranian Club gym.

In the opening half, both sides played aggressively as each had chances to get on the board.

Mohamed Redha Meghji of Somji & Co whistled a right-footer inches over the bar while Ali Soda of Afro Trading forced a good save from the burly figure of Munna Meghji with a chance up close.

Despite the chances at both ends, the first half ended goalless and on a sour note, Somji & Co’s Maisam Datoo finding his way into the referee’s book with a yellow card for dissent.

With everything to play for in the final nine minutes, it was Afro Trading who stepped up their game. Irfan Damji found some room and let go from 15 feet out, but Munna Meghji turned his shot aside.

Cometh the hour, cometh the man. With half of the final frame already elapsed and neither team on the board, the prospect of penalties was looming large.

It was then that Walji squirmed free from his mark in midfield and broke out with Mohamed Sadiq Jetha on his right and only one defender and the goalkeeper for company.

Walji waltzed ahead and waited before feeding an inch-perfect through pass through to Jetha who slid the ball into an open net with one touch of his right foot.

It was a quality goal that sent the capacity crowd into a frenzy.

With chances few and far between in the final five minutes, Jetha’s lone marker was enough to see Afro Trading hang on and take the win.

Much was expected out of Altaf Posta, Somji & Co’s star striker.

But a solid display at the back by Afro Trading’s Irfan Damji and Ali Soda kept Posta quiet throughout the match, restricting him to attempts from far out.

However Walji said it wasn’t all about keeping one player from the opposition at bay, saying that football was all about team work.

“It’s not about cancelling one player,” he said. “At the end of the day it’s a team game, and one player makes a difference when it matters most.”

The Afro Trading star said he thought Posta didn’t get the support he needed from his teammates, and hence was not as effective.

“I think he had a quite game in terms of making clear cut chances because he didn’t receive the ball as much as he would have liked to, but that’s football,” Walji said.

DRIFTING TO SOON GO MAINSTREAM IN THE UAE

One of my first assignments at the Gulf News, this time a feature story on the sport of drifting in the UAE. I met with Ahmed Al Amiri, the country's top drifter, at the Toyota Al Futtaim Motors showroom at Dubai Festival City, and got a chance to sit inside the new Toyota 86.

Here is my piece. You can also find it below!

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Dubai: There are many ways a local automaker can celebrate the unveiling of a new car. Naming a country-wide drifting team under their sponsorship is one of them.

So when the Toyota 86 was released earlier this year, Al Futtaim Motors Toyota officially unveiled the Toyota Emirates Drifting Team — a large group of drivers, technicians, and support staff united by their love of drifting.

Leading the team is 27-year-old Ahmad Al Amiri, the recently crowned UAE King of Drift after a first-place finish in the Red Bull Car Park Drift challenge in Abu Dhabi earlier this year.

“I’m the kind of person who’s always looking for a challenge,” the Abu Dhabi-born Al Amiri said. “I love being under the spotlight and at the same time being under a lot of pressure — drifting gives me all of that.”

Still a relatively young motorsport in the UAE, drifting has come forward in leaps and bounds in the last few years. From only a handful of people officially drifting, UAE Drift, the country’s main drifting body, now has 55 registered drivers.

High octane sport

Al Amiri said he is excited by the next two years as he and his team set out to promote the high octane motorsport around the Gulf.

“We’re going to visit many universities and schools in the UAE, where we plan to spread awareness and promote drifting as a motorsport,” he said.

Driven by the adrenaline-pumping nature of the sport and the country’s passion for anything that goes fast and has four wheels, Al Amiri believes that there is a healthy appetite for drifting in the UAE.

“It has so much action, and I think this is what spectators are looking for — action and excitement,” he said.
“The competition level is very high, and there are many teams coming in from around the GCC and sometimes from other Arab countries to compete here.”

And people are showing interest. At a Drift UAE event held at the Dubai Autodrome late last year, more than 3,000 spectators came out to see the country’s finest drifters in action.

Bright future

The future of drifting in the country looks bright as well. According to Al Amiri, many drivers from the UAE will take their prowess behind the wheel abroad to showcase their skills at bigger and better events.

“I think there are many people who are going to go out from the UAE to the international level,” he said. “Not necessarily Emiratis, but drifters from the UAE.”

But it’s not just the sport of drifting that Al Amiri and his team will be hoping to spread around the region. Awareness about safe driving is very much on their agenda of what they want to get across to their audience, and more importantly to youth.

Al Amiri said it was especially important to target high school students, who would soon be getting their driver’s licences and buying cars.

“We have an awareness message for all of these guys: drive safe on the public street, and take off in the safe environment,” he said. “Where the safety requirements are met [helmets, racing suits, etc.], you can take off, because it’s a safe place to do so.”

For this exciting motorsport that still finds itself in its early days in this part of the world, the only way is up as more people get a taste of the spectacle Al Amiri calls “motortainment.”

MICHAEL PHELPS: THE DIET OF A CHAMPION

I'm currently interning at the Gulf News, the UAE's largest and most circulated newspaper and most read online paper.

Last week after American swimmer Michael Phelps broke the record for most Olympic medals (22), we ran a centre-spread in the paper on the great man.

My contribution was a sidebar on what the guy eats on a daily basis during swimming season.  You can read all about it here, or below!

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Michael Phelps: The diet of a champion

Dubai; Ham and cheese sandwiches on white bread, chocolate-chip pancakes and French toast richly coated with sugar may seem far from ideal for the diet of an elite athlete. But for Olympic record holder Michael Phelps, it’s what’s usually on the menu during swimming season.

Enriched pasta (half a kilo of it) with carbonara sauce also features regularly on Phelps’ lunch and dinner plate and almost every meal is washed down with a couple of bottles of energy drink, usually Gatorade.

Per day, the 6ft 4in (1.93m) American swimmer racks up a staggering 12,000 calories.

So how can Phelps eat so much and get away with it?

There is a method to the madness. Refined carbohydrates, which he gets from eating items like bread and pasta, allows his body to digest quickly and transform the food into instant energy — exactly what he needs before he hits the water.

Coupled with Phelps’ superhuman physique and metabolism, he burns off most of those calories during his five hours of training a day.

“Eat, sleep and swim, that’s all I can do,” Phelps famously said after winning one of his many gold medals in Athens in 2004.