São Paulo – The twins of Mohamed Abed Abdul Jawad, former player of the Saudi national team, have been in Belo Horizonte for two months training with Internacional de Minas U-20 team, a second-league team in Minas Gerais championship. Fahad and Faris Jawad are 17 years old and are finishing high school in the Arab country. Picture above, from L to R, Faris, Elmo Molica Jr., a partner in the team, Fahad and the father Mohamed.
They’ll return to Saudi Arabia in the end of the year to finish their studies and then come back to Minas Gerais, where they’ll stay practicing for at least a year. Inter de Minas president Thiago Gosling said they may compete in the next U-20 Minas championship early next year.
Faris is a midfielder while Fahad is a defender. “They arrived around two months and came practicing with us. Our training center is well recognized in Belo Horizonte, and their father has watched the games. They train daily with the team, but this year championship is already over. We want them to play the Minas U-20 championship next year,” said Gosling.
The twins’ father Mohamed was captain of the Saudi national team in the 1994 World Cup in the United States. He met Amira, from Minas Gerais, who’s the mother of his five children, in 1983, when he went to Belo Horizonte to have a knee surgery with then Brazilian national team orthopedic doctor Neylor Lasmar, who worked in the 1982 and 1986 cups. Amira was a nurse at Hospital São Lucas, where Mohamed underwent surgery. They met there and soon after they got married and moved to Jeddah in the Gulf country.
Mohamed is 57 years old and Amira is 55. “My family comes to Brazil every year. We spend [Saudi] summer vacations here in Belo Horizonte, where my wife’s family lives. But this year we decided to stay with the boys for a year so they can practice with Inter de Minas. They are at a good age, graduating from high school, and there’s a great chance of improving their performance playing Brazilian soccer,” the former player said.
He believes there’s no better place for their sons to practice. “Base soccer in Brazil is the best, and it’ll be good for them to learn the language, the culture, the soccer philosophy, as well as discipline, techniques, game tactics,” he said.
Two years ago, the twins practiced in Atlético Mineiro and last year in Cruzeiro, both Minas Gerais first division teams. “This year, they started practicing in Soccer Trainer too, a high-performance training center. The gym owner is a partner in Inter de Minas and invited them to practice with them,” said the father, who used to play as left-back and, besides Saudi national team, also played at Al-Ahli in Jeddah.
The couple has three other children. One lives in the US, one in Saudi Arabia, and the other in Spain.
Translated by Guilherme Miranda
