Michael Groom
Feature
Soccer's samba revolution
by Margaret Forde
Former All White Michael Groom is bringing a little Brazilian flair to New Zealand sport’s perennial poor cousin – and to players’ lives in general.
From Auckland to Christchurch, Te Kuiti to Taradale, soccer for young people is being transformed from the structured game traditionally associated with European immigrants to an art form, an expression, an embodiment of freedom and fun – played to the beat of booming Brazilian samba sounds.
Pioneered and now taught with spirit and delight by former All White Michael Groom, futebol de salao – literally “football on a court” – is generating the skills some say could help save New Zealand’s game from more embarrassing lessons such as the one handed out to our national soccer team at the Confederations Cup in France in June.
At a personal level, samba-style soccer has also offered Groom, these days a highly regarded English teacher at exclusive St Paul’s Collegiate in Hamilton, the perfect vehicle to convey his family’s profound understanding, born of harsh experience, of the importance of celebrating life and living it with passion.
In the past 10 years Groom’s wife Angela and youngest son Dylan (10) have both defied death and medical science. With characteristic quiet strength, Angela stared down a rare and aggressive illness with an “only hope” operation, which turned out to be life-saving. Dylan’s shot at life, with five costly operations in France between the ages of six months and six years – each time accompanied by his parents, older sister Jessica and brothers Josh and Ben – is, by contrast, public and well documented.
So, samba soccer – so “positive and reaffirming”, according to Angela Groom – is also an opportunity to put something back into the community that has given the family so much.
To understand it, you need to look at its origins. Brazilians, says Michael Groom, are not fixated with results, but they get them anyway. Their play is expressive, rather than combative. “If you watch even the top players, you’ll see they never lose the capacity to associate their sport with fun. Even their national coach talks about playing happy football and I believe there’s a message in that attitude for us all, whatever we’re doing.”
The events that led to Groom’s current sharing of the samba approach to soccer – and life – began in France in 1999. The family were in Paris for Dylan’s last operation. An accomplished flute player and lover of all music, Groom was snatching a rare moment of enjoyment browsing in a music shop. “There, in the midst of all the trauma in our life, was this CD of Brazilian music. It had an effervescence about it that spoke to me very strongly at that time. On the sleeve, two words jumped out at me – samba and futebol,” he remembers.
Back in New Zealand, just six weeks of the school year remained. The Grooms – whose home had been sacrificed to enable the family to stay together for Dylan’s operations – took up the offer of a caravan at Tairua. Groom transformed into teacher by day and quickly established a routine of schoolwork in the morning and PE in the afternoon. Out came the Brazilian CD from Paris. The Groom children loved the concept, and so did a boy from a neighbouring caravan, whose parents asked Groom to coach him, too.
Once, back in Hamilton, Groom recalls becoming “enamoured” of a Nike advertisement on TV at the time, featuring Brazilian soccer mega-stars such as Ronaldo. “I realised it wasn’t just what I was seeing, it was what I was hearing.”
Then came a moment of clarity, “an epiphany”, he says. “I thought, I feel this affinity and joy with the way the Brazilians play. Why don’t I share that with kids other than my own, and the boy in the next door caravan?”
Groom is now a FIFA-endorsed coach of futebol de salao, but when he began his soccer school, he says he didn’t realise that this formalised version of street soccer was established. “I didn’t think, ‘Brazilian soccer – that looks like a good thing.’ What happened with me is finding out about it reinforced what I had always understood; football in that expressive sense. When I was a youngster, I always watched out for the artists who elevated the game and tried to model myself on them. When I discovered futebol, I felt I had come the full circle.”
He recalls that, as an only child growing up in Hamilton, he got hold of a small ball and “discovered we were good company”. Now, he encourages his samba-soccer students to make friends with the thing they’re kicking. “As with anything, there’s no shortcut. The only way to improve is to be with the ball.”
A recent brochure – written by Groom and produced by a grateful soccer parent – offers this summary of futebol de salao: “This FIFA-approved game is a condensed version of normal football. Played properly, it is fast, exciting and very skilful. All children in Brazil play futebol de salao before playing conventional football. Many of the Brazilian greats attribute their fantastic ball skills directly to the playing of this game.”
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