Yahoo Sports The Somali team making football waves in Birmingham
How many football teams can lay claim to a league and cup double in their first season of competition?
Not even Real Madrid or Manchester City can hope for the sort of immediate success that Kawala FC have had. Not even close.
I'm there on a stormy December night under floodlights in Smethwick, in the West Midlands.
The team - which includes players and coaches from Somalia, Yemen, Eritrea and Poland - are being drilled ahead of a weekend fixture in the Birmingham and District League, Division One.
The wintry weather is not an issue in the slightest. As children, many of the squad fled violence and corruption in their country of birth.
"Football speaks all languages," said chairman and founder Salah Aliderie, who funded the club himself in 2023 after moving to the UK from Somalia.
It started with a few of them playing five-a-side on a cramped pitch, but word of a new football team started to spread in the Somali community, and the reaction was incredible – they were inundated with players.
With some unable to afford the weekly subs, Mr Aliderie and his fellow coaches put their hands in their own pockets to ensure they could put a squad together for 11-a-side football.
"Kawala FC is so special to me because you see youth flourish," he said.
"Some of them don't have jobs, and basically, there's a high crime rate in Birmingham; youth clubs are shutting down, and I knew I had to do something."
At the start of last season, the team could rely on a small and enthusiastic following – largely parents, friends, and housemates.
By the end of the season, after scooping the Bill Hill Cup and a league title, hundreds of supporters from Birmingham's Somali community were heading to the turnstiles to savour some grassroots football.
At the time of writing, Kawala FC have scored 21 goals in their last five games.
"It's deeper than just football," said coach Abdek Abdi, who left Djibouti, on the edge of the Gulf of Aden, at the age of four for a new life with his family in the Midlands.
"The team has become a safe space for everyone," he said.
"It's like we've known each other for years, an unshakeable bond. We're more like brothers here."
The celebratory atmosphere is continuing, and a sense of community is thriving.
"It's great to be part of this – and all the time I think about my parents," said Sudeys Moalim, who, at 20, is one of Kawala's youngest players.
"They came to the UK from war-torn Somalia, they came here to make a better life.
"For me, to take my nationality onto the football pitch each week is a big thing for me. It's almost beyond words."
Champions League dreams
The players credit the chairman for giving them an opportunity to play team football.
Mr Alidiere described himself as a boss riding a wave of euphoria, freed from the shackles of football bureaucracy but with a dream to develop the club further, to open an academy alongside a youth centre.
Right now, under the Smethwick floodlights, anything seems possible.
If Football Association bosses were to come here on the coldest and wettest of training sessions, they would feel that the grassroots game is in fine fettle.
"We'd like to think one day we make Premier League stars…that Kawala FC was the start of something big," Mr Alidiere said.
"I believe in the boys, and it's all about their smiles and happiness and their mothers coming to congratulate them; that's amazing to see.
Kawala's aim for their second season is a high finish in their division and a step closer to the Somali British Champions League, the Somali British version of Europe's top competition, recognising the top teams of Somalian heritage.
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