Started by two coaches who were tired of watching children queue
Seven years, two hundred and fourteen children, and the same rule about group sizes.
Why the groups are small
Fiyavalhu started in 2018 with two coaches, one hired pitch and thirty one children.
We started it because of something both of us had watched for years: a session of forty children, one ball, one coach and a queue. A child in that session touches the ball for perhaps four minutes in an hour, spends the rest standing, and goes home having been at football rather than having played it.
So the academy has one rule it has never broken. Twelve children to a coach, and every child on the pitch for the whole session. That makes us more expensive to run than the alternative and it is the entire reason the academy exists. If we ever have to choose between taking twenty more children and keeping the ratio, we will keep the ratio and put the twenty on a waiting list, and we have done exactly that twice.
We coach football from six to sixteen and athletics three mornings a week, and we run a girls programme in both because a girls squad that trains once a month is not a programme. Everything we do is on a term plan a parent can read: the sessions, the fixtures, the fees and who is coaching.
The coaches
Ahmed Sinan
Coached youth football for nine years before starting the academy in 2018. Holds a regional coaching licence and still takes the foundation...
Shifaana Yoosuf
Played for eleven years and coaches all four girls squads. Attendance in the girls programme roughly doubled in the month after she took the...
Hassan Vishal
Sprints and jumps. Teaches running as a technique, which is why eight weeks with him changes a child's sixty metre time more than a year of...
Fathimath Reema
Registrations, fees, the term plan and the first aid cover. She is who you speak to about a trial or a payment.
Heat, injuries and who is watching
Is it too hot to train in the afternoon?
Four in the afternoon is the earliest we can get children to the ground after school and it is the coolest hour available to us. Water breaks are every fifteen minutes for the youngest group and every twenty for the rest.
We cancel or move a session when it is genuinely dangerous, and we cancel it rather than shortening it. Athletics runs at six in the morning for the same reason.
What about injuries?
Two coaches on every session hold a current first aid certificate and there is a kit on the ground at all times.
We ring a parent for anything more than a knock, on the day, before the session ends. A child who has had a blow to the head does not return to the session, whatever they or anybody else says about feeling fine.
Can I stay and watch?
Always, at every session, in every group. A club that does not want parents watching is a club worth asking questions about.
We ask two things: let the coach coach during the session, and speak to us afterwards rather than across the pitch.
Come and watch a session
Rehendhi Turf, Hulhumale Phase One. Training runs from four every afternoon except Friday.