Football pitch paid for by UAE opens in Washington DC

The pitch is for the Marie Reed school in a culturally diverse neighbourhood and is part of the UAE's drive to help low-income areas in the US while raising its own profile.

The UAE Ambassador to the United States, Yousef Al Otaiba, talks to a school pupil during the launch ceremony for the US$1.5m UAE-funded football pitch in Washington DC.

WASHINGTON, DC // Hundreds of schoolchildren are to benefit from a UAE-funded football pitch and training academy inaugurated yesterday.

The US$1.5 million (Dh5.5m) all-weather astroturf ground and renovated amphitheatre was unveiled at a ceremony attended by the UAE Ambassador to the United States, Yousef Al Otaiba, and the mayor of Washington, Vincent Grey.

City Soccer in the Community, an initiative of Manchester City Football Club, will offer pupils three years of coaching at the pitch, at Marie Reed School, in Washington’s Adams Morgan suburb. The surrounding community will also be able to use the facilities.

“The impact on the community is immediate,” said Eugene Pinkard, principal of Marie Reed. “The investment that Man City and the UAE made motivated the city to renovate areas around the field and got the community to advocate for new safety measures.

“Now we’ve got a better quality facility, learning opportunities for our kids, a safer environment for the whole community.”

The pitch is one of several donated by the UAE and Man City, which is owned by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Presidential Affairs. Similar fields were created in inner-city areas of Miami, Los Angeles, Chicago and New York.

The pitch in DC was paid for by the UAE and this made up part of the $1.5m total renovation cost, with the rest of the funding coming from the city’s purse.

The pitches are a small part of the UAE’s charitable programme across the US, which is aimed at aiding the poor and improving knowledge about the emirates.

“We don’t often discuss human relations between countries and, with a field like this, not only do we reach out and engage a vibrant part of the DC community, but we reach people who ordinarily don’t know who the UAE is,” Mr Al Otaiba said.

“This is a very big part of our public diplomacy campaign and showing people who we are and what we do.”

Seven months ago the Marie Reed pitch was an uneven, mostly dirt expanse ringed on one side by crumbling wooden amphitheatre seating.

“It used to look terrible,” said Marquis, 10, a grade 5 pupil. “It had lumps in the ground, everybody used to get injured, people’s ankles used to get hurt all the time.”

When the UAE Embassy and City Soccer began looking for a pitch to renovate in Washington, “this was the best location”, said Mr Al Otaiba, who played football while studying at nearby Georgetown University.

“It was a great school and a hugely popular space used by the entire community and was in need of repair.”

City mayor Mr Grey said: “The District of Columbia is honoured to have worked with the embassy of the United Arab Emirates to build this wonderful field.”

About 200 youngsters wearing blue Man City T-shirts attended the dedication ceremony and tried out the new pitch, with help from players from Major League Soccer’s DC United.

“I like to think that our field was like this all the time, to forget about the old one,” said Kastenny Contreras, a grade 5 pupil who plays for the school football team. “We’re lucky to have this field.”

Marie Reed, a public school, mostly serves African-American and immigrant communities, and like all of the city’s schools, is facing increasingly slim budgets. One in six of Washington’s public schools are slated to be closed because of a lack of funds.

As Marie Reed’s pupils looked on over a period of months as the pitch was levelled and turf put down, excitement and intrigue grew, with teachers having to pull out maps to show their classes where the UAE was located.

“Interesting things happen every day in my district but never did I think that the United Arab Emirates would be providing us a playing field,” said a city councilman, Jim Graham. “We’re deeply grateful for that.”