More Than a Game

Ronny Mintjens, linguist, teacher, and professional football coach, needed to find a way to really see the world, something deeper than mere tourism. Leaving the comfort and familiarity of his own European life, Mintjens decided to pursue his love of professional sports and exotic cultures all at once. He began coaching football at clubs all across Africa. Beginning in southern and then moving on to eastern Africa, Mintjens soon realized that there was more to professional football than simply training and winning matches. Trying to find ways to make a true mark on the game, Mintjens travelled from one club to the next. Each club, from Mount Kilimanjaro and the Serengeti Plains to Table Mountain and the Cape of Good Hope, held its own surprises and boasted its own strengths and weaknesses. In the end, each had its own lessons on the intricate weaving of African culture and heritage. Leave your life behind and dive into the exotic world of African sports with this fascinating tale of an ambitious foreigner and his deep journey to understand football as a way of life in the African football club. In this relatively unknown part of the world, football is certainly more than a game.