The former professional footballer Chris Brown moved to the UAE nine years ago. He initially worked as a soccer coach before being asked to help set up the youth academy at the Jebel Ali Centre of Excellence. He then took over managing the centre, a job he did for five years. In May, he set up his own business, It’s Just Football. Here, he talks about how running his own business has forced him to become a jack of all trades.
6.30am
I am at the computer at 6.30 in the morning. I have breakfast — Alpen muesli — and check my emails to see if anything has come in. I check the internet with regards to football and see what’s going on. I support Crewe Alexandra. That’s usually a conversation-stopper but I’ve followed them since I played for them and I’ve still got a strong attachment to the staff there. I do all this from home at JLT — I set up in the free zone — so I am based here during the day.
7.30am
I go the gym for an hour.
9.30am
When I get back I look through my to-do list. At the moment I am arranging the design and marketing for the Youth Academy. I don’t think I realised the amount of time it takes; I need to be a jack of all trades doing everything from marketing to admin to accounting and coaching. At the minute it’s a bit of a balancing act. We’ve also got some tournaments coming soon: an inter-hotel tournament, a banks tournament and a schools tournament — though this is for teachers, not for the kids. If I’ve got any meetings planned, I schedule them for the morning. I am part of the BNI group. It’s a business network and referrals group. It’s really good. Everyone tries to help each other and you’ve got 60 seconds at each meeting to say what you do and what you’re looking for.
12.30pm / 1pm
I have lunch either at home or on the run if I am out. In the afternoon, I focus on what we are doing in regard to coaching and arrange for equipment if we need anything. I look at payments and registrations and the numbers in the groups. I do this from home or from a little cafe if our little dog, Frenchie, is getting to me. My wife was delighted when I started my own company as it meant we could get a dog.
3.45pm
I go up to the coaching sessions. On Monday and Wednesday we’ve got a session at the Football Centre at 3.45pm to 4.45pm. Then I’ve got to fly to Jebel Ali for the sessions at 5.30pm-7pm. We’ve got lots of different groups. For five to eight-year-olds, the future players squads. Then a new group for nine to 12-year-olds, the Tekkers Squad, at United Pro Sports for those who want to develop their technical skills. The Development Squads are for nine to 18-year-olds, then the Advanced Squads for nine to 16-year-olds twice a week at Jebel Ali. On Thursdays we have fitness and conditioning sessions. And we have league games on Saturdays. I started the Jebel Ali Youth League in 2007 and I am now merging this league with IFA’s youth league to create the Dubai Premier Youth League. I am really hands on. I’ve got two part-time coaches, Derek Whyte, who used to play for Scotland and Joe Hatcher. I’ve also got a young lad, Ali Fortune, who’s just started full-time.
7pm
I go home and answer more emails. Because I am out and off email a number pile up. So I watch TV and answer emails and do some more planning. Every year we take the academy away so we’ve been to Helsinki, Gothenburg and Madrid. We also organised an event with England and Scotland ex-internationals. We had a sportsmen’s dinner and played an exhibition match. I’m hoping to take that to Qatar this year. The first year we raised money for a charity in Sierra Leone and this year we raised funds for the youth academy. I play football twice a week but I’ve pulled my hamstring so I’m taking it easy and playing tennis at the moment. My wife and I take it in turns to cook. We try to be healthy in the evening and have meat and veg, no carbs. I watch a bit of football and head to bed about 11.30pm.
The specs
Engine: 1.5-litre turbo
Power: 181hp
Torque: 230Nm
Transmission: 6-speed automatic
Starting price: Dh79,000
On sale: Now
Children who witnessed blood bath want to help others
Aged just 11, Khulood Al Najjar’s daughter, Nora, bravely attempted to fight off Philip Spence. Her finger was injured when she put her hand in between the claw hammer and her mother’s head.
As a vital witness, she was forced to relive the ordeal by police who needed to identify the attacker and ensure he was found guilty.
Now aged 16, Nora has decided she wants to dedicate her career to helping other victims of crime.
“It was very horrible for her. She saw her mum, dying, just next to her eyes. But now she just wants to go forward,” said Khulood, speaking about how her eldest daughter was dealing with the trauma of the incident five years ago. “She is saying, 'mama, I want to be a lawyer, I want to help people achieve justice'.”
Khulood’s youngest daughter, Fatima, was seven at the time of the attack and attempted to help paramedics responding to the incident.
“Now she wants to be a maxillofacial doctor,” Khulood said. “She said to me ‘it is because a maxillofacial doctor returned your face, mama’. Now she wants to help people see themselves in the mirror again.”
Khulood’s son, Saeed, was nine in 2014 and slept through the attack. While he did not witness the trauma, this made it more difficult for him to understand what had happened. He has ambitions to become an engineer.
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Kumulus Water
Started: 2021
Founders: Iheb Triki and Mohamed Ali Abid
Based: Tunisia
Sector: Water technology
Number of staff: 22
Investment raised: $4 million
more from Janine di Giovanni
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Book%20Details
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The White Lotus: Season three
Creator: Mike White
Starring: Walton Goggins, Jason Isaacs, Natasha Rothwell
Rating: 4.5/5
MATCH INFO
Inter Milan 2 (Vecino 65', Barella 83')
Verona 1 (Verre 19' pen)
In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
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Zakat definitions
Zakat: an Arabic word meaning ‘to cleanse’ or ‘purification’.
Nisab: the minimum amount that a Muslim must have before being obliged to pay zakat. Traditionally, the nisab threshold was 87.48 grams of gold, or 612.36 grams of silver. The monetary value of the nisab therefore varies by current prices and currencies.
Zakat Al Mal: the ‘cleansing’ of wealth, as one of the five pillars of Islam; a spiritual duty for all Muslims meeting the ‘nisab’ wealth criteria in a lunar year, to pay 2.5 per cent of their wealth in alms to the deserving and needy.
Zakat Al Fitr: a donation to charity given during Ramadan, before Eid Al Fitr, in the form of food. Every adult Muslim who possesses food in excess of the needs of themselves and their family must pay two qadahs (an old measure just over 2 kilograms) of flour, wheat, barley or rice from each person in a household, as a minimum.
The National's picks
4.35pm: Tilal Al Khalediah
5.10pm: Continous
5.45pm: Raging Torrent
6.20pm: West Acre
7pm: Flood Zone
7.40pm: Straight No Chaser
8.15pm: Romantic Warrior
8.50pm: Calandogan
9.30pm: Forever Young
Skewed figures
In the village of Mevagissey in southwest England the housing stock has doubled in the last century while the number of residents is half the historic high. The village's Neighbourhood Development Plan states that 26% of homes are holiday retreats. Prices are high, averaging around £300,000, £50,000 more than the Cornish average of £250,000. The local average wage is £15,458.
COMPANY%20PROFILE
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NO OTHER LAND
Director: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal
Stars: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham
Rating: 3.5/5
Moving%20Out%202
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UAE cricketers abroad
Sid Jhurani is not the first cricketer from the UAE to go to the UK to try his luck.
Rameez Shahzad Played alongside Ben Stokes and Liam Plunkett in Durham while he was studying there. He also played club cricket as an overseas professional, but his time in the UK stunted his UAE career. The batsman went a decade without playing for the national team.
Yodhin Punja The seam bowler was named in the UAE’s extended World Cup squad in 2015 despite being just 15 at the time. He made his senior UAE debut aged 16, and subsequently took up a scholarship at Claremont High School in the south of England.
The specs
Engine: 2.2-litre, turbodiesel
Transmission: 6-speed auto
Power: 160hp
Torque: 385Nm
Price: Dh116,900
On sale: now
Need to know
Unlike other mobile wallets and payment apps, a unique feature of eWallet is that there is no need to have a bank account, credit or debit card to do digital payments.
Customers only need a valid Emirates ID and a working UAE mobile number to register for eWallet account.
MATCH INFO
Watford 1 (Deulofeu 80' p)
Chelsea 2 (Abraham 5', Pulisic 55')
Brief scores:
Kashima Antlers 0
River Plate 4
Zuculini 24', Martinez 73', 90 2', Borre 89' (pen)
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
The specs
Engine: 5.0-litre supercharged V8
Transmission: Eight-speed auto
Power: 575bhp
Torque: 700Nm
Price: Dh554,000
On sale: now
The specs
Engine: 4.0-litre flat-six
Torque: 450Nm at 6,100rpm
Transmission: 7-speed PDK auto or 6-speed manual
Fuel economy, combined: 13.8L/100km
On sale: Available to order now
Maestro
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