Farouck Abrahams tells a great story about how he came to learn he’d been appointed goalkeeper coach for the Bafana squad at the 2002 World Cup in Korea and Japan.
At the time, Farouk was the respected soccer writer and columnist for the Cape Times. One evening Farouk was waiting for coach Jomo Sono’s World Cup squad announcement to drop. When the news broke, he couldn’t believe his eyes.
“Me and Jomo Sono were very close. I played for Cosmos for a couple of games but I couldn’t stomach Joburg, with a wife and a baby, back then. The three of us were alone in Joburg and it just didn’t work out.
“We’ve always maintained a great relationship. When he got picked as the coach I was still writing about it and then I saw it on the internet. The announcement read: ‘Bafana squad announced... technical team...’
“And I was like, Huh?”
Farouk’s name appeared with the rest of the team and coaching staff. He had some explaining to do to his bosses at the Cape Times, but it was a dream come true.
“He phoned me a couple of weeks before and asked if I was still involved in goalkeeper coaching - whether I was still active. I told him I was and had by then already established the academy.”
Farouk laughs as he recalls the conversation: “...But you’re still active in goalkeeper coaching?’ he asked again. So I’m thinking, why is he asking me all these things?
“It was an honour for me - from dreaming about watching a World Cup to being at the World Cup as a coach. One of my biggest moments was when Raul stood next to me the night we played Spain. My first instinct was to ask for his autograph, but I thought if they don’t win it, my medal and his medal will say the same thing - World Cup 2002 participant. So I just spoke to him as he conversed with me in his broken English. I realised I’d arrived somewhere to stand next to guys like that.”
I met Farouk four years before that World Cup adventure after the Cape Times hired him to write about Bafana’s first involvement in the tournament, in France in 1998.
Farouk was a revelation as a writer. I remember being in awe of him as a young journo at the Cape Times. I was suitably embarrassed when I discovered his football pedigree much later and that his journalism was just another of his many talents.
Farouk has indeed reached the heights of the Beautiful Game in a career spanning several decades. In football he has few peers and has seen and done it all. He has been a junior forcing his way into senior teams, a young player at pro clubs, the country’s first full-time player/coach, national team goalkeeper coach, soccer writer and columnist, PSL club coach and pundit.
But there is one constant thread that sets Farouk aside from most sportspeople of his era: his longevity in the game.
Now, even in the twilight of his career, he is making a telling contribution with his Farouk Abrahams Goalkeeper & Lifeskills Academy (FAGA).
Set up as a non-profit organisation, which over the last decade has survived largely due to the generous sponsorship of Metropolitan, FAGA was recently accredited by Safa.
What that means is that the academy is now an official pipeline to the country’s amateur clubs, PSL clubs and national team for the best goalkeepers around.
But next to the words “goalkeeping academy” on the signboards at the academy’s base off Rosmead Avenue, are written “life skills” and “social upliftment”
If you know where Farouk comes from and where his love for soccer started in the 1960s, you will understand why his academy is a non-profit organisation and not a business.
“I have to go back to the apartheid era. I was born in Wynberg and then every time we were in the back of a truck with our furniture and moved from Wynberg, to Claremont, to Constantia and then Diep River.
“That’s when my football career started and in those days our parents - they were all in their 40s - had a football team called the All Blacks because of their affinity with the rugby team and that’s why I support the All Blacks up till today.
“We used to watch on a Sunday afternoon, checking these ou toppies playing football. There was no junior football structure in those days, so you either played for the first team or the second team of that particular club. I was 13 or 14 and I was playing with the big people. But that’s how we grew up in the game very quickly.
“From there they pushed us into Manenberg, which was an awakening because then there were no facilities. It was playing in the streets. It was a whole new ball game, so it was all these youngsters together and we started our own team called Young Lilies, which was fantastic.
“I became the secretary of the club at that young age of 14 and I became part of the coaching as well, because there were no structures in those days.
“I grew past my junior days and I played for a team called Drifters here in Grassy Park against all these seasoned guys. I’m talking about guys who were big names in those days and here I am, 16 or 17 years old, playing in goal for them with no time to cry.”
Farouk was a natural in goals. After starting off in midfield as a schoolboy, he had to play goalie after the first choice was injured and had to leave the field. Farouk ended up saving a few penalties.
“Then the structure started when I got selected for the inter-district board teams and there was more structure when I broke the trend in the Cape Town Spurs teams.
“In those days you didn’t play for Spurs until you came through the whole club, inter-district, Western Province and then only Cape Town Spurs. But I broke that cycle, and I was just turning 20 then. I was a Spurs fanatic and here they’re asking me to play for Spurs.”
Farouk became the number one goalkeeper at Spurs within three weeks after the first choice ‘keeper broke an arm and the second choice couldn’t see well under floodlights.
A professional debut at Athlone Stadium resulted in a win and a second game away, versus PE United, also saw Farouk in a winning Spurs side.
“That was it. I never looked back and then obviously all the other major, major successes followed.”
While player/coach of Maritzburg United, another Spurs came knocking on the door - Tottenham Hotspur of White Hart Lane, to be exact.
“I had an official offer of a trial with Tottenham Hotspur. All that was needed was R3 000 to get there. It was a lot back then.
“I was diligent, never took up offers from other leagues, like the rebel leagues, so I was very sad that nobody even bothered to club together. It was in the newspapers and everything, I even posed with a Spur shirt thinking White Hart Lane, here I come’.
“But it never got off the ground because of nothing else but the money. The saddest part is a couple of years later Bruce Grobbelaar and Gary Bailey - who were my peers and I played against them - went and made it there because they had the money.
“I thought, My goodness, I was as good as them so I could have made it too if I just had the money and the support structures’.
“It was very sad for me. I believe that guys like myself and a few other guys were good enough.
“There was nothing wrong with our ability to play at premier league level at that stage, because it was a matter of the passion we had without the expert training. It was five years without earning a cent at pro level. I only realised when TV came out that you could play with goalkeeper gloves.”
“It was tough but you must have dreams. When I was in Manenberg, I can show you team pictures of Manenberg teams where me and maybe two or three guys survived.
“The rest died through gangs or drugs or they’re still on drugs or they got strokes. Mine is a real life story of surviving - all of that. There is no excuse. I don’t have sympathy for people who say, because we lived in Manenberg.”
Despite his success, his academy ranks amongst Farouk’s proudest achievements. It is with this vehicle that he can give talented young people the opportunity they may otherwise not receive.
But because of their circumstances, many of the kids arrive without having eaten, they have problems at home or they’re tempted to join gangs or get into drugs. So goalkeeping is just one of the lessons at FAGA, along with a full curriculum of life skills and preventative programmes - all offered free of charge.
“The FAGA success story stretches all the way from amateur football to the professional ranks through the national youth teams and right up to the Bafana and Banyana teams.
“We are known as the country’s biggest supermarket for goalkeepers. And off the field, those who did not make it all the way to the top in football, achieved success in other careers with FAGA providing a solid support structure along the way.
“I personally feel that (South African soccer) is developing from the top down, but you can’t do that.
“The academy is the perfect example of developing from grassroots because of the fact that the kids who are busy making it started at grassroots levels.
“Almost the majority of goalkeepers who are 20, 25 or 26 started with us as nine- or 10-year-olds. This means that our model and structure is set upproperly.
“The SA football structure develops once you get into the national football team. In my opinion, that’s too late. If there is no high performance structures you can forget about it. You cannot be developed once you get to the U20s, and there are players there who are called beginners and development players. That is way too late.”
Farouk made his daughter Rishca, who left her career at the City of Cape Town, chief operations officer of the academy, and she has been key to it attaining Safa accreditation.
“Roping in Rishca as COO was a masterstroke because of her expertise and passion which, in turn, helped to strengthen the bond between my own family and the FAGA family.
“The accreditation will help us to get more funding and help us to get money back from the clubs because we have been kicked in the teeth. They have to pay compensation, but big clubs in this country have said they don’t have to pay because we are not accredited, knowing full well that we have developed this child, we can prove it. But they lack compassion and sportsmanship so they just diss you. With the accreditation, now we can claim compensation.”
“We are grateful for their ongoing support despite the tough economic climate which helps us to offer a holistic development programme free of charge to kids from all walks of life. We are, however, open to proposals for additional funders to cover our extensive social upliftment projects we have the pipeline.
“I have to give my gratitude to my wife Soraya and my kids for allowing me the freedom to spend so much of my time taking care of the FAGA family. I could not achieve such great success without their support and understanding.”
*Gasant Abarder is the Editor of the Cape Argus
Cape Argus