“In DR Congo, when a player does well, the fans throw tickets at him”

July Cease Gomez He will be the only Spaniard to participate this season in Ligue 1 in the Dominican Republic of Congo. He will do so after signing last August as coach of Simba, a modest club based in Kolwezi. “I know the city and they asked me how much I wanted to charge to lead the team. I told them a high amount because training in DR Congo was not among my priorities, but they arrived. The proposal inspired confidence in me and, taking into account how 2020 was going and that they paid me half in advance, I decided to accept “, confesses Julio César, a great connoisseur of the country after his repeated visits in search of talent:” I had already been here six or seven times. When I organized the Real Madrid campuses in the United States, I met many people. Among them was a Congolese who offered me to participate in a joint project with the government. We travel the country looking for the best to play an international tournament. It's incredible how many doors Madrid can open for you. “

One of those tournaments was played in Dubai. Julio César Gómez was in charge of directing the Congolese team, which swept. From that moment, the Spanish began to be recognized in the country. “Every time I went to a province, they offered me to lead their team,” recalls Gómez, who rejected each of Simba's previous proposals: “Training in DR Congo was never in my plans.” The man from Madrid, one of the founders of the Ciudad de Getafe school, where Achraf Hakimi played his first matches, traveled last August to Kolwezi, located in the mining province of Lualaba, supplier of cobalt, copper, tin, radium, diamonds and coltan. “It represents 40% of the GDP of the DR of the Congo”, discovers Julio César, who has found a club whose greatest asset is his hobby: “We train with two or three thousand people in the stands. Pre-season matches are on target closed and, even so, about five thousand people come and we have just inaugurated a stadium, the Dominique Dior, for 15,000 spectators “. After being in the middle of the table last season, Simba hopes that the arrival of Gómez will translate into a competitive leap: “The objective is to place the club among the best in the country, But it will not be easy. There are two very strong teams here: Mazembe and AS Vita Club. Not only nationally, but also continental. They have a professional structure and it is practically impossible to compete against them. We must be one notch below. “

Despite having spent several weeks in the DR of Congo, Julio César Gómez never ceases to be surprised: “The other day one of our new signings scored an impressive goal. He came to the stands to celebrate and they rained money. Real money fell. It's something I've never seen before. Here, when a player does well, they give him money as a tip. They have tried to give me. Small bills, of course. The way they live football is impressive. “On the negative side, Julio César highlights the way some footballers live:” Our star charges 1,000 dollars, but there are players who do not earn more than 400. They live in houses that The club provides him and they are not the best conditions for professional footballers. “Not to mention Covid-19:” It seems that it doesn't exist. Few wear a mask and no one keeps a safe distance. They are very used to dealing with all kinds of diseases. The Spaniard believes that, like society, African football is the antipodes of European football: “More and more, people go to the field like those who go to the theater. And in the most modest categories sometimes there are not even fans. structures are professional, but support is missing. In DR Congo, you know that people will never fail. There will always be people willing to go cheer on the stadium“.

So far, Julio César Gómez has directed seven pre-season friendlies with full victories. His good run, however, does not stop the voices that wonder why a Spaniard was chosen to sit on the Simba bench: “They say that I charge a lot for what little I know about Congolese football. That here is played in another way. They are voices that I am silencing with victories, but I will not win every game. Defeats will come and, then, criticism will appear again. “The Madrid coach does not intend to revolutionize Congolese football, but he does want to improve a methodology anchored in the past:” The rest of the teams kill the players. What if running, what if jumping … All without the ball. It is like going back in time. I have brought a globalized training, all with the ball and in which the players imitate real game situations. It seems strange to them, but they are evaluating it. “There is only one week left until the start of Ligue 1, at which point Julio César Gómez will have to prove that he was the right choice. “They expect a lot from me”, says the Spaniard, whose salary will be financed entirely by the provincial government: “We are the reference team in Lualaba.”