Doctors are, surveys say, one of the very last professions you should date if spending time with your partner is paramount. They work extensive, incommodious hours and, furthermore, invariably take tasks home with them.<\/p>\n
Dylan Manickum doesn\u2019t get to pass many hours with the girlfriend he met many moons ago. He says Zoe Wells works \u201creally long hours\u201d as a doctor, and yet he knows \u2013 a guilty grin acting as vindication \u2013 he\u2019s the chief offender.<\/p>\n
The 31-year-old spends his weekdays in steel-toed boots, a hi-vis jacket and a hard hat, working from early morning to late afternoon as an assistant engineer on a construction site. He rushes from the day job straight to the evening one, where he trains or coaches five nights a week \u2013 and in multiple sports.<\/p>\n
Manickum is an 11-a-side winger for Oceania\u2019s untouchable superpower Auckland City, he captains the same club and the New Zealand national team at futsal, and he teaches kids at both disciplines. His weekends are dominated by matches on pitches or courts.<\/p>\n
Then Zoe has to deal with the trips away. Dylan\u2019s latest was a little further than to Christchurch or Dunedin on New Zealand\u2019s South Island for a domestic game, or to Fiji, New Caledonia or Vanuatu, where he has played in the OFC Champions League. It was 15,500 kilometres to Jeddah for the FIFA Club World Cup\u2122.<\/p>\n
It was worth it. While some players bound for this year\u2019s FIFA Futsal World Cup\u2122 are able to say they shared a court with the great Ricardinho, and fewer with the immortal Falcao, Manickum can boast of sharing grass with N\u2019Golo Kante and Karim Benzema.<\/p>\n
The exhilarating creator chats to FIFA about that Saudi Arabia 2023 experience, his Uzbekistan 2024 hopes, the Futsal Whites\u2019 emergence and his uber-hectic lifestyle.<\/p>\n
How did it feel to share a pitch with Fabinho, N\u2019Golo Kante, Karim Benzema and Co at the FIFA Club World Cup?<\/p>\n
Dylan Manickum: Unbelievable. They\u2019re superstars of the game. You dream of playing against the best players, but you never think you\u2019re going to play against someone of the calibre of Benzema. It was a real honour. We wanted to get a result, we held them for a bit, but they were just too good. Still, the experience was something I\u2019ll always remember. The accommodation, the facilities, the flights\u2026 everything was world-class. We don\u2019t usually get that here in New Zealand. We also all get on really well. It was really nice to be around the fellas.<\/p>\n
You\u2019re a big fan of Fabinho\u2019s former team\u2026<\/p>\n
My dad supports Liverpool, so I was brought up supporting Liverpool, watching Michael Owen. It made me want to be a striker growing up. I\u2019ve deviated to the wing. But Michael Owen, Stevie G (Gerrard) and all those legends made me fall in love with football. I still try and get up early for the games when I can and it doesn\u2019t impact work too much (laughs).<\/p>\n
How did it feel to lose on penalties to the Solomon Islands and miss out on a place at the last FIFA Futsal World Cup?<\/p>\n
Heart-wrenching. We worked really hard for a long time to reach the World Cup. We were in a good position with one-and-a-half minutes left on the clock. I guess that\u2019s the beauty of futsal \u2013 the game\u2019s never really over. But on that occasion we were the ones who suffered. It really, really hurt. It took a lot of time to get over.<\/p>\n
Your former team-mate, Atta Elayyan, whose dream it was to play in the Futsal World Cup, was tragically killed in the Christchurch mosque shootings in 2019. What did you think of the tribute your team-mates made to him in Lithuania?<\/p>\n
It was a great way to remember him. He was a massive part of the team. In the last qualifiers and these qualifiers, he was right there with us. We still all talk about him. He was my room-mate at one point. It was a big loss for futsal in this region. He was involved in youth futsal too. He was a great fella, a great goalkeeper. It was unbelievably sad. I don\u2019t think anyone\u2019s really got over it.<\/p>\n
Going into the Uzbekistan 2024 qualifiers, you were one off equaling Marvin Eakins\u2019 caps\u2019 record for the Futsal Whites. Were you worried he\u2019d stop picking you to hold on to it?<\/p>\n
(laughs) Marvin was the captain when I first came into the team. We have a good relationship. It was a great feeling to get the record. It means that you\u2019ve been involved a long time and that you\u2019ve kept playing at the highest level this country has to offer. Marvin was pleased for me. It was an amazing feeling.<\/p>\n
How did it feel to beat Tahiti 5-0 in the OFC Futsal Nations Cup and finally qualify for the Futsal World Cup for the first time?<\/p>\n
It was one of the best feelings of my life. It was really emotional. It means a lot to everyone involved, but a few of the senior boys \u2013 I was four campaigns, Steve [Ashby-Peckham] was three \u2013 have put in a lot of big shifts to get us to where we are now, so it’s hard to put into words what it means. Futsal\u2019s in a great place in New Zealand looking forward.<\/p>\n
Do you also take inspiration from the All Whites\u2019 performances at South Africa 2010?<\/p>\n
We all take massive inspiration from it. They proved with football \u2013 and it\u2019s the same with futsal \u2013 that anything is possible. You can be the underdogs and get results. It was massive for New Zealand. I remember getting up at 4:30am to watch the games. It meant a lot to us. The players that were there in 2010 put in a massive shift to get the three results they got on the world stage. I think we\u2019re quite similar to that group of players in that we all work really hard and we all get on really well, we have that unity. I think this World Cup can be our 2010, our opportunity to get young kids involved in futsal, get the whole country involved. We\u2019ve got great support behind us \u2013 families, coaches. We had a great crowd for the Nations Cup final. If we can get some good results, do the country proud, the region proud, I\u2019m sure it will help grow the sport in New Zealand and Oceania.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Doctors are, surveys say, one of the very last professions you should date if spending time with your partner is paramount. They work extensive, incommodious hours and, furthermore, invariably take tasks home with them. Dylan Manickum doesn\u2019t get to pass many hours with the girlfriend he met many moons ago. He says Zoe Wells works […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":930153,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20966],"tags":[9648,27192],"class_list":["post-930152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fifa-news","tag-fifa","tag-fifa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/930152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=930152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/930152\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/930153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=930152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=930152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/91varzeshi.ir\/portal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=930152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}