Schalke’s German international Gerald Asamoah is using his fame to help children with heart defects in his birthplace, Ghana, after recently creating the Gerald Asamoah Foundation. “Our plan is to develop our project to enable us to set up a clinic in Ghana. Everything has gone smoothly so far,” said the 29-year-old football striker, who also plans to fly children to heart specialists in Germany for treatment: “This foundation is quite literally close to my heart.” Asamoah is all too familiar with heart problems himself having been diagnosed with a thickening of the heart septum in 1998, a defect that threatened to call time on his career. Asamoah chose to continue playing football – at his own risk, which is why there is always a defibrillator on hand whenever he takes to the pitch in case he suffers cardiac arrest.

Carlos Mozer was once an elegant football defender for Flamengo, Benfica and Marseille, but today, the 47-year-old is the manager of Angola’s InterClube. If his playing career is anything to go by, Mozer’s venture into management will no doubt be a success. Mozer won the Copa Libertadores, the Intercontinental Cup and several Brazilian league football titles with Flamengo before helping Benfica (league champion, cup winner) and Marseille (three league titles) to similar glory. Few would be surprised if Mozer’s Midas touch held true on a third continent.

Football Under Cover, a film by Germany’s David Assmann and Iran’s Ayat Najafi, recently stole the headlines at the world-famous “Berlinale” film festival in Berlin. The 85-minute documentary tells the story of a friendly football match between the Iranian women’s national team and a Berlin girls’ XI in Tehran in April 2006. The film is just as exciting and thrilling as a good football match. While focusing on injustice and repression, the movie also concentrates on the Muslim women’s desire to be treated equally as well as on the longing for freedom of-somewhat more surprisingly-some of the immigrants in the Berlin team. The match in Tehran was organised by the two directors themselves, who had to overcome a number of hurdles to do so. A rematch has yet to take place, even though both teams are desperate to play each other again. Attempts to organise a second game fell through in the summer of 2007 for political reasons. According to Assmann and Najafi, Football Under Cover cannot be screened in Iran, despite the success of the film at the “Berlinale” and the worldwide praise that has been heaped on this courageous movie.