There are plenty of rules. One of the rules is even in the name of the sport – Walking Football. This implies that running is prohibited and, in fact, anything other than brisk walking is penalized. The trick is to keep one foot on the ground at all times.
The no-running rule is strictly enforced because this version of the most popular team sport in the world is “meant to be played with a reduced risk of injury by the older generation” and, therefore, has a minimum age of 50 for the men and 40 for the women. There is no maximum age limit.
Other rules include keeping the height of kicks lower than the crossbar of the goal, so nobody’s heading the ball or getting smacked in the face by a snappy shot. Most players also try to give their opponent some breathing room by staying approximately a meter apart.
Another and quite fundamental element of the game is that each player is limited to three touches before having to send the ball on as either a pass or a shot. The effect is that no single player can dominate by dribbling the ball from one end of the field to the other and that every player gets a good share of touches. And there is no offside rule when walking, which eliminates the most frustrating part (especially for fans) of the running game.
All these limitations don’t end up slowing the game down much. On the contrary, when ol’Pat recently attended a tournament at Browns in Vilamoura, I was a bit surprised by how fast-paced and lively the highly-competitive games were.
Most of these mature players were enthusiastic, active and engaged, and moving around at an energetic pace with nice powerful shots hitting the net or bouncing wildly off the goal post. I saw very little, if any, strolling. I also didn’t hear much screaming or shouting and no arguing with the referees. It was obvious the participants were there to have fun, experience team spirit and enjoy some healthy exercise in the warm Algarve sun … and maybe win a game or two, or even a trophy, all in a very sportsmanlike atmosphere.
I was lucky to be introduced to the local brand of Walking Football by Steve Johnson (61), a committee member of the East Algarve Walking Football Club. A true renaissance man, Steve takes an art class with my lovely wife every Wednesday and goes to football practice every Tuesday and Thursdays with the East Algarve WFC.
It turns out that it could be said that East Algarve is the leading club along the southern coast of Portugal since they hold practices in both Tavira and Olhão and have over 200 members. There are other groups in Faro and Albufeira, which you can Google if you’re interested. EAFC is at eastalgarvewf.com and have a Facebook page as do the ladies.
Nothing is ever easy and when I met with Steve and the other members of the club at around 9am on a Tuesday morning, it turned out that the Municipal Pavilion in Tavira named for Dr. Eduardo Mansinho, on Avenida Zeca Afonso, where they usually practice, was being used for some sort of school activity. “This never happens” was the lament among the attendees, but they didn’t know about the “old Pat principle”, so it looked like we were out of luck. But no, within 10 minutes, we were on our way to another field along the walls of the castle. Even though we had to crawl through a hole in the fence, practice was under way only half an hour late thanks to the resourcefulness of the group’s leaders.
On this particular morning (they always practice in the cooler morning hours avoiding the heat and leaving the rest of the day for other activities), there were over two dozen guys displaying a variety of body types from svelte to not. There was no coach per se, but everybody seemed to be coaxing each other to not sprint and keep the ball moving smartly from player to player.
There was one problematic player who stood out early who had the nickname “Running John”, and indeed seemed to dash around the court more than the others. His opponents, teammates and the acting ref had apparently become accustomed to John’s inability to restrain himself and simply called him on it and didn’t allow a score or handed the ball over to the other side.
Later, when I asked him his name, he refused to divulge it and simply reported “They call me Running John”. I did find out that he was one of the oldest players at 72 and was from Altura, and that he had played for the last seven years but wasn’t going to the tournament because his daughter from the UK was in town.
The group has a decidedly international feel, though a majority of players were from the United Kingdom originally. So, while there is Ivan Bernard (60), a Frenchman who had never played organized football before and was a newer player having only started eight months ago, there’s also Barry Overn (55), a popular artist and teacher in Tavira, who explained many of the rules to me and pointed out that much is done on the honor system. “If we end up going too fast, we’ll call it on ourselves.”
Then there was Andy Wilkens (60) from the UK, who was very proud of the charitable work that the East Algarve Walking Football Club did helping the local Bombeiros during fire season, old folks (even older than the team) during the holidays and getting children with diabetes the monitors they needed.
Flávio Padilha (53), meanwhile, is from Brazil, now a businessman in Portugal, and says he plays “just for fun”. One of the more powerful kickers on the pitch, Flávio bounced a few balls off goalkeeper Stephen D’Arcy (64), a portly gentleman who told me he used to be a fullback, but “as I picked up a few pounds, I do a pretty good job of filling the goal.”
Mark Wilson (61) is proud of being an original member, meaning that he joined nearly nine years ago (It might be interesting to note that walking football as an organized sport is not that old, only being conceived in 2011 by the Chesterfield Football Club. It has quickly spread to being quite popular throughout Europe).
“It’s all so casual,” Wilson said. “There’s no jumping, no real leaders, but plenty of soft enforcement.” He also went on to explain that, in England (the founding country), some walking leagues do not have the limited three-touch rule and allow more open unlimited touches. I even found a relative youngster, Alun Davis, who, at 45, is allowed to train but has five more years before he can participate in matches or tournaments. “The whole point is to enjoy,” he explained.
And yes, I did come across a Portuguese guy in the person of Nuno Alves (50), who claims to run “one of the smallest sports bars in the world”. That’s Fanu Sports Bar, which is down the hill from the Maria Nova Hotel in Tavira and is quite little but does have outdoor seating. Nuno, in particular, has the walking trick solved, since he glides around the pitch without lifting his knees. His technique looks a bit like an athletic Groucho Marx comic walk.
I asked him why there weren’t more Portuguese players in a country where they love their football. “Since I run a bar, I can play in the morning, while most locals have to work,” he explained. “That’s why this game is so popular with expat pensioners. It fits in their schedule perfectly.” Nuno’s plans also seemed quite flexible when he mentioned to a teammate that he wouldn’t be at training on Thursday in Olhão because he was playing golf. Currently, I found no Americans.
Back to the tournament: Ol’Pat was able to watch the East Algarve Women go at it and was impressed to see how well they played since this group had only started last season. This was their first tournament, and they came in third and won a trophy. Diane Burg (40), one of their captains, was literally bursting with pride. “We won our first game today, ever,” she said, “and we’re thrilled.”
The East Algarve men walkers had a mixed bag of results as confirmed by my main source of information, Steve Johnson. They had four teams entered, two over 50 and two over 60, in the two-day tournament at Browns Sports Resort (no apostrophe – I don’t get it). One team in each age group represented Olhão and one represented Tavira.
Some years previously, they simply referred to themselves as East Algarve A, B, C and D, but apparently nobody liked the idea of being on the “D” squad and so going by where they train and are from seemed more equal and fair.
When the tournament dust settled on Sunday afternoon, it turned out the East Algarve over-50s from Olhão finished 4th, while the Tavira over-50s came in ninth place out of the 11 teams competing in that age group.
Any way, as Steve explained, his team, the Tavira over-60s, were unlucky. “Since we finished at the bottom of our group on Friday, we had a play-off against the bottom team from the other group and we lost 1-0. We should have won, but hit the post three times and probably had about seven or eight other scoring chances, while they had about three and did score. It meant we finished ninth out of nine.” And, oh by the way, the Olhão over-60s won the tournament.
Near the end of the session on Friday, my lovely wife and I were cooling out at the Browns’ beer garden and visiting with the Ramsgits, a good-natured bunch of matures from Ramsgate, Kent, England, who had been in the Algarve since the previous Tuesday and played the Tavira over-60s to a nil/nil draw earlier in the day.
When they immediately noticed I was an American, they didn’t hesitate to admonish me that their sport was not to be referred to as “walking soccer”. I assured them that I was a professional covering the event for The Resident, the leading English-language newspaper in the region, so I knew better, but I also felt obligated to remind them that soccer was originally an English term conceived as an abbreviation of association football to distinguish it from rugby football.
Since it appeared I might know what I was talking about, we didn’t go into a major discussion of why on earth Americans refer to their favorite sport as simply “football”, when kicking is not a prominent feature.
As we sat in the shade listening to war stories of nearly-missed goals, Luís Costa (64), one of the other Portuguese East Algarve over-60s players, joined our table. Before he got a chance to order, the referee of the 0-0 game between the blokes from Ramsgate and the Tavira over-60s game came over and offered to buy Luís a beer. Eyebrows were raised. It turns out the ref had sent Luís off during that game, not for dangerous play but because he violated the three-touch rule too often. The ref wanted to make sure there were no hard feelings. Of course there weren’t, and so we all raised our glasses in a toast to good sportsmanship.
By Pat the Expat
|| features@algarveresident.com
For the previous 10 years, Pat lived in Panama which used to be rated above Portugal as a top retirement destination (but not any more), where he wrote a column for a tourist publication.
