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The tsunami that struck Asia in 2004 brought misery and devastation. Huge solidarity was shown by the international community, including the global football family. A youth centre is soon to be opened in Sri Lanka thanks to a donation of 300,000 euros by the German national team.
The tsunami that laid waste to vast areas of south and south-east Asia in 2004 ravaged the holiday island of Sri Lanka, killing some 230,000 people in a matter of minutes, and leaving tens of thousands homeless. The country was in great need, and its football facilities were also destroyed.
The playing fields and pavilions in the south of the country, an area that attracts legions of tourists from all over the globe each year, was quite simply washed away, bringing football to a standstill for months. In Matara, for example, a snapped goalpost in the city’s stadium was for a long time the solitary reminder that this had once been a football pitch. SC Matara, the only top-flight club in this region and the object of great pride among locals, were unable to participate in the Sri Lankan championship following the break-up of the team.
Aid arrived from all over the world, notably from Germany, whose national team played a selection of Bundesliga all-stars in a benefit match for the tsunami relief effort at Gelsenkirchen’s “Auf Schalke” arena on 25 January 2005. However, at the suggestion of then national coach Jurgen Klinsmann, the 300,000 euros raised were allocated to a specific project rather than simply used to top up the relief funds. The city of Matara, which had suffered 4,000 deaths and great devastation, was chosen.
GREAT GENEROSITY
The rebuilding work began with the help of FIFA and the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) and in particular thanks to the generous donation from Germany. The Football Federation of Sri Lanka, led by Honorary President Manilal Fernando and President Dishan Goonasekara, as well as Germany’s ambassador in Sri Lanka, Jurgen Weerth, also lent their active support to the project. A central element of the rebuilt football facility is a new youth centre where young people can attend classroom lessons in the morning and play football in the afternoon.
The Sri Lankan-German Youth Centre, which recently held a topping-out ceremony, is aimed primarily at helping young people whom the tsunami robbed not only of their home but also of many family members.
The whole of Matara turned out for the ceremony, with 400 boys and girls standing in file in recognition of the good deed by Germany’s national team. The event was also attended by the region’s mayor, the President of the Football Federation of Sri Lanka and, as a special guest, the country’s minister of information.
Of course, the media were also out in force, and provided detailed coverage of the youth centre’s topping-out ceremony in the evening and morning newspapers. Fernando was visibly moved: “This gesture by Germany’s professional footballers belies their hardened image and definitely shows that their hearts are in the right place.”
Goonasekara, overwhelmed by this magnificent act of generosity and solidarity by the German national team and football association, added: “German football’s achievement in Matara is more important than any FIFA World Cup win.”

Walter Zenga
Born: 28 April 1960 in Milan (Italy)
Nationality: Italian
Nickname: uomo ragno (Spider-Man)
Playing career: 1977-1978; Inter Milan. 1978-1979: Salernitana. 1979-1980: Savona, 1980-1982: Sambenedettese. 1982-1994: Inter Milan. 1994-1996: Sampdoria. 1996-1997: Padua. 1997-1999: New England Revolution (USA).
Honours as a player: 1989: Italian league champion, Italian super cup winner, World’s Best Goalkeeper. 1990: best goalkeeper of the FIFA World Cup™ in Italy (semi-finals), World’s Best Goalkeeper. 1991: UEFA Cup winner, World’s Best Goalkeeper. 1994: UEFA Cup winner. 369 games in Italy’s SerieA. 58 international appearances for Italy.
Coaching career: 1998-1999: New England Revolution (player coach). 2002-2003: National Bucharest (Romania). 2004-2005: Steaua Bucharest. 2005-2006: Red Star Belgrade (Serbia). 2006: Gaziantepspor (Turkey). 2007: Al-Ain (UAE). 2007: Dinamo Bucharest. Since April 2008: Catania (Italy).
Honours as a coach: 2005: Romanian league champion. 2006: Serbian league and cup double winner.

The New Walter Zenga
Once an internationally acclaimed goalkeeper and a happy-go-lucky man about town, after years of peregrination, Walter Zenga returned home to Italy in April – as a coach and a different person.
The mobile phone rang once, stopped for a while, rang again and then broke into such a paroxysm of chirrups that it sounded as though its owner was trying for a mention in the Guinness Book of Records. Walter Zenga flicked through his SMS messages of congratulation until the moment he was due to appear in front of the television cameras. Forty-two messages had reached him in the space of 15 minutes.
The time was just after 5pm on 6 April 2008 on a warm, sunny day in Catania, Sicily. Although, according to the calendar, summer had not officially announced itself, that Sunday had the hallmark of an intoxicating midsummer party – at least from a football perspective. Catania, on the verge of relegation and without a winning point for weeks, had beaten favourites Napoli 3-0 and Zenga was already celebrating his first 90 minutes as a professional manager in Italy.
“That was an exhausting debut and my head was pounding with thoughts,” muttered Zenga, who had seemingly lost the plot during the match’s emotional roller coaster. “I am 48 years old but working as a SerieA coach is definitely something else.” In fact, Zenga was celebrating his 48th birthday three weeks later.
But he could be forgiven for jumping the gun a little as launching into his new career back home smacked somewhat of the classic film, Back to the Future. His official presentation had been in Catania on 1 April, which some cynics had prosaically described as “an April Fool’s joke”. Until the end of the season, Zenga in fact had more trouble changing his own reputation than battling with relegation.
THE OTHER ZENGA
For many fans, Zenga is still the nonchalant, provocative showman who, as a sideline, happened to defend the goal for Inter Milan and the Italian national team so brilliantly for several years while his main occupation was to take advantage of every possible opportunity to clutter the tabloids with sensational gossip. “I was rich, unbeatable and pampered — the handsome playboy who thought he could do what he liked, a kind of happy-go-lucky man about town,” explains Zenga. “You can afford to do that when you’re thirty and you live life to the full – but when you reach fifty, it’s a different story.”
In recent years Zenga has been traipsing around the world with varying degrees of success as a coach with New England Revolution, National und Steaua Bucharest, Red Star Belgrade, Gaziantepspot, Al-Ain and Dinamo Bucharest. When Catania contacted him, he was in the middle of negotiating with a Russian club. “During all that time, I was not trying to distance myself from Italy but from my image. You grow older and wiser with the years and today I am a different man.”
That is certainly true of his appearance. Now he is going bald and usually wears a tailor-made suit in which he could easily pass as a banker. But such is his reputation for being an inveterate reveller that no-one is willing to believe the latest version of his story. “People are so prejudiced,” he laments. But it was he who fanned the flames.
UNBEATABLE?
He was only ten years old and already a fervent Inter Milan fan when Italo Galbiati called him up to Inter’s youth team. As a ballboy for the club’s home games at the San Siro Stadium, he always headed towards a place behind the goal defended by his idol, Ivano Bordon. Then, after earning his spurs with lower division teams such as Salernitana, Savona and Sambenedettese, he took his first bow with Inter at the age of 23 on 11 September 1983. As fate would have it, a certain Ivano Bordon was keeping goal for opponents Sampdoria.
From that point on, Zenga’s star began to rise and the awards came pouring in: World’s Best Goalkeeper from 1989 to 1991, Italian league champion in 1989 and UEFA Cup winner in 1991 and 1994. While in his prime towards the end of the 1980s, he was regarded as practically unbeatable, even setting up a new FIFA World Cup1″ record during the 1990 FIFA World Cup™ on home ground — 518 minutes of play without conceding a goal. But he will never forgive himself for missing Claudio Caniggia’s equaliser in the semi-final against Argentina. Although Italy were subsequently knocked out on penalty kicks, Zenga was crowned best goalkeeper.
Despite the accolades, he is still remembered in Italy primarily for his antics off the pitch, his involvement with countless starlets, his work as a radio DJ while with Inter and his guest appearances on many television shows. One anecdote that keeps making the rounds is how the national coach decided to call him up belatedly but could not reach him as Zenga had locked himself in at home with a new flame and had disconnected the phone. In 1992, when national coach Arrigo Sacchi surprised him by leaving him out of the azzurri team, Zenga teacted by singing an Italian pop song into the reporters’ microphone: They’ve murdered Spider-Man. From that moment on, the name stuck and he was known as uomo ragno (Spider-Man).
GIUSEPPE BERGOMI’S PRAISE
“You’d have to write a book if you wanted to explain Walter well,” comments Inter idol and Zenga’s former team¬mate Giuseppe Bergomi. “Whenever the opponents scored a goal, he could willingly have throttled his defenders. But his image as a playboy wallowing in dolce vita, my God, that’s over 20 years old. Nowadays he’s a dedicated coach with thousands of facts stored on his computer. Impressive. Walter will be coaching Inter one day.”
Zenga has also been praised by other giants in Italian football. “He deserved this break with Catania,” comments 2006 Wold-Cup-winning coach Marcello Lippi. “Walter learned a lot working abroad. He has a meticulous approach and is incredibly knowledgeable,” muses Zenga’s former Inter Milan coach, Giovanni Trapattoni, currently Republic of Ireland manager. “Anyone who dismisses him as a stereotype can’t see farther than his nose.”
One thing that Zenga learnt in the past ten years, during which winning the double with Red Star Belgrade in 2006 was his greatest triumph, is revealed in the following comment: “Sometimes all that the coach needs is just a lucky break.”
He once said that a coach’s career took a circuitous route via the motorway, the ring road or country lanes. So, in fact, uomo ragno was never killed off; on the contrary, he was meandering around country lanes. Now he has arrived home again. And Catania wear red and blue — just like Spider-Man.

Carolina Morace
Nickname: Tiger
Born: 5 February 1964 in Venice, Italy
Nationality: Italian
Clubs as a player: Trani, Lazio, Verona, Modena, Reggiana, Torres, Aguana, Milan (all Italy).
Honours as a player: Participation in 6 European Championships (twice runner-up) and at the 1991 FIFA Women’s World Cup. 153 caps for Italy, 105 goals.
Coaching career: Lazio (women), Viterbese C1 (men, professional football), Italy U-18 national women’s team, Italy national women’s team.
Miscellaneous: Today, Morace lives in Rome and works as a television football commentator and lawyer. Her favourite (men’s) teams are AS Roma and Manchester United, her favourite players are Cristiano Ronaldo and Francesco Totti.

Carolina Morace:
“Girls need role models”
Scoring 105 goals in 153 games for Italy is in itself worthy of considerable adulation but since retiring from international football, Carolina Morace’s contribution to both the men’s and women’s game rates without doubt amongst the greatest.
FM: How did you initially get into football?
Carolina Morace: I started playing in Division C in Venice, where I was born, when I was 11 years old. Before my very first match, Mum said ‘Ciao, please make sure you take care because you are small and the other players are a lot older and bigger than you. Be careful of tackles’. Mum was really worried about me getting hurt. The funny thing was though, late in the match I got a breakaway and was running full steam towards the goal with the defender chasing me. As the goalie came out to close me down, the defender pushed me and I collided with her. But despite being the small one, it wasn’t me that got hurt. She unfortunately came away with a big black eye and I was fine.
Why did you start playing football? Girls playing football was not so common in the 1970s.
Morace: There isn’t really a reason I wanted to play. Football is like art. When people paint, write or sculpt, the talent needs to come out. With football it is the same.
How did you progress to the national team?
Morace: I was playing for Spinea in Division B when Sergio Guenza, the national coach and also the coach of the Lazio junior men’s team called me to ask if I would train with the national women’s team. I was only 14 years old, but I wasn’t nervous at all. I was just happy and relaxed. When I looked at the other players who were 28 or so, the only difference between me and them was my young face. Physically I was as big as them and I could play, so the age gap did not matter. The first match I played at San Paulo, the Naples stadium where Maradona played, certainly also surprised them. They could see I was fast and had ability, and that I was an unselfish player. I therefore had a good relationship with my team-mates.
What made you such a good player?
Morace: I was a good player because I trained responsibly and I was keen to learn. For example, I learned to play with both feet by focusing on my left foot during training. On the days that the team was not training, I went with my trainer, Professor Perrone, to the field where we did hill sprints, plyometrics and resistance training. My whole body changed and thanks to him, my talent was supplemented with physical ability. I became faster and more powerful and subsequently stayed with him until the end of my career. Professor Perrone also joined my staff when I went into coaching.
What were the highlights in your playing career?
Morace: The first was when we played a derby match in Agliana versus Pisa. We were winning 1-0 when our goalkeeper got sent off midway through the first half. They scored a penalty to make the score 1 -1 and we had to play the remainder of the match with 10 players. Just before the second half started, I said to one of the younger players who was worried about lasting the distance, ‘Don’t worry, I will score.’ And I did. I scored two goals to make the final result 3-1. Another highlight was playing England at Wembley as a curtain raiser to Manchester United v. Liverpool in the FA Cup. I scored four times, which is a record that can now not be broken given that Wembley has been reconstructed. Even the English fans applauded when I went into the tunnel.
How did you progress into coaching?
Morace: Football is my life and when I played, the coach always remarked that I knew what was happening so I thought I might make a good coach. I started as the player/coach for the regional team in Lazio. Then after I got my Serie C coaching qualification, the newspaper wrote a story to say I was the first woman in Italy to obtain professional coaching qualifications. Viterbese approached me after this to take over their men’s team. It was a great experience and in my first game as coach the fans all brought cards with pink roses on them. It was a little bit different from coaching women where many of the players had been team-mates and they knew and respected me on the field. Still, it never made any difference when I was angry whether it was a man or a woman on the field. I liked coaching the men and they respected me. I am still in touch with many of them today. In fact, two of them, Liverani (Fiorentina) and Biacco (Catania), work with me on TV.
What do you do nowadays?
Morace: At weekends, I work as a football commentator on television. I started doing this when I was 28 and my first TV co-worker was Nils Liedholm.
Later I worked with Zibi Boniek and Sandro Mazzola. It is relatively easy work for me as it is about providing viewers with comments based on technical and tactical analysis. It certainly takes a lot less effort than coaching or playing. I am a lawyer by trade but during the week I work as a professor in the science of movement in Rome. I teach football culture to first-and second-year post-graduate physical education students. I also have a role as a FIFA ambassador. For me this is very important because young girls need to have role models.