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Gods of the Astro: Part three

Welcome to the underground scene that is the beating heart & soul of the game we all love…

Gods of the Astro: Part three

Images:

Jonathan Frederick Turton

Gods of the Astro is a week-long investigation into the strangers across the United Kingdom who come together to play football every morning, afternoon, and night. These aren’t your 7-a-side post-work commitments or your Sunday League sloggers, these are groups of people who choose to play football with whoever else is up for a game. It’s like a secret society, but with goal celebrations instead of dodgy handshakes. We’ve split this feature in five parts. This is part three, so make sure you're caught up on part one and part two before you dive in. This week, we join the story in a Birmingham cafe where James met two very special young men…

Yahya Al-Tikrity is from Baghdad, and Dan Barnes is from Wales. They both talk about their childhoods playing football: Dan having trials at Llanelli FC and Bristol Rovers, Yahya playing seven, eight, nine times a week on the pitches of Baghdad. A few years ago, they both moved to Birmingham, both needed a place to play football, and both signed up for a game through Footy Addicts.

“From the first time we met on the pitch, well, I think we were on the same wavelength,” says Yahya. We went out a couple of times with friends from football, and then Covid and furlough and all of that happened.”“That turned into us hanging out, watching football together, playing FIFA together,” Dan continues. “I’d go over Yahya’s, or Yahya would come over mine. We’d go for walks or whatever, and our friendship developed. And then, well, Yahya was looking to buy a cafe, weren’t you?”

Just a couple of years after meeting each other on the pitch, understanding the way each other played, going out for drinks and walks, Yahya and Ben opened the cafe we’re sitting in now. And in December, Ben is getting married, and Yahya will be his best man. 

It’s an incredible story. It’s time to head back to the car; we’ve got another match to go to. And they’re both playing in it.

JASON, A FOOTY ADDICT

The approach to the astro turf at Lordswood, a collection of pitches attached to a school five miles south and west of Villa Park, is the start to the movie: big lights, big shadows, big pitches, big characters. Dan and Yahya are on their way, but we’re here to speak to a bunch of regulars who have made the Monday 7pm kick-off a weekly event. They’re here early, the balls are pumped hard, the passes are firm, and Jon’s got them doing a crossbar challenge. The number of times the clang of sweet, sweet plastic on sweet, sweet metal chimes around the place as we set up the cameras tells us that there are some very, very good players here. 

Jason has been putting the cones out since we arrived. In fact, Jason can’t stop putting the cones out. In the last three years, he’s played and hosted 500 games of football. But it hasn’t always been like that.

“I'm not saying I'm better now,” Jason says as there’s another clang in the distance. “But now there are people who are more accepting of me being terrible. It’s more of a togetherness, and just being able to play with players who back in school probably wouldn’t have let me play.” 

A recurring theme brought up by the people we speak to is that they thought they weren’t good enough to play. School can be unforgiving, especially when sport is involved, and the idea that you can’t participate because you haven’t played since you were tiny or aren’t confident enough about getting better is one that isn’t comfortable to think about. For what it’s worth, Jason tells us he only started playing at college, and as we watch him in the two 30-minute games he’s involved in that evening, we can’t believe he didn’t play when he was a kid. Jason controls the game from the back, constantly encouraging his teammates and opposition, constantly pinging diagonal balls, constantly looking for nutmegs, backheels, those little side-spinning balls with the outside of his boot. 

Born in Sheffield to parents from Hong Kong, Jason grew up in Manchester and moved to Birmingham seven years ago. After playing for the very first time at college, he got involved with the Man v Fat football organisation during Covid. It made him feel connected to other men who hadn’t played in a while and had deemed themselves too unfit to play. Three years down the line, things have accelerated. Jason is a Footy Addicts host and a mainstay of the pick-up community in this part of Birmingham.

“I guess you could say I’m addicted to football, to be honest,” he tells me. Jason doesn’t realise how important, or how good at football, he is. “I’m definitely an overthinker, and being able to play football stops that. I get a good night's sleep when I play football; when I’m not, my mind goes everywhere.

“Before this year, I was playing up to four games per day, and I didn’t have a day off. My knees have forced me to have a bit more time off though, now, and since then I’ve been doing more hosting. I turn up with the balls and bibs, make the teams and check they’re even, call when it’s time for them to switch the keepers, and let the players have a kickabout. It’s not much effort; it’s just rewarding to be able to provide a football match for other people and being able to watch the football myself.”

One of those people Jason gets to play alongside, against, and watch, is Chelsea Weston.