Rain, Rehearsals and Real Football: October in Leicester with the FIFA Master
After a first month blessed with suspiciously sunny skies, October reminded the 27th edition of the FIFA Master exactly where we were living. The umbrellas came out, the jackets got thicker and the days got shorter, but if anything the calendar only got fuller. If September was about getting to know each other, October was about getting to know Leicester, English sports and what the FIFA Master really asks of us.
The month kicked off around a dinner table. Tomo had been promising us for weeks that his favourite Japanese restaurant in town, Maki & Ramen, was the real deal and he was right. That later took us to some of the city's excellent Indian restaurants, a reminder that Leicester's diversity is as much on the plate as it is in the classroom. We also had three birthdays to celebrate this month with Marine, Oumaima, and Nahil bringing us together and it is safe to say our shared kitchens have never been busier, and the local pubs got to know us a little better too.
October will above all be remembered as the month where sport was everywhere. On the pitch, our futsal sessions in the DMU sports hall became a ritual, alongside tennis sessions, outdoor runs and, for the more adventurous, some other classes around Leicester with some abs blast classes and dance classes. Carlos, Gabriella, Dylan, Marine and Emma laced up and participated in the Leicester Half Marathon this month, an outstanding achievement squeezed in between lectures and assessment deadlines, and one that had the rest of us cheering from the sidelines and, perhaps, quietly reconsidering our own fitness goals. Off the pitch, almost every weekend a group set off to experience the English football pyramid first-hand, with trips to Derby County, Wolves, Arsenal and Nottingham giving us a taste of the atmosphere that makes the game here so special. Closer to home, almost all of us watched Leicester City take on Wigan Athletic in a 3-0 win, and we also enjoyed a very special evening at the King Power Stadium as England's Lionesses smashed Greece 5-0 in their World Cup qualifier game held in the city.
The oval ball had its moment too. Following our earlier visits to Rugby School and the Leicester Tigers, we returned to Mattioli Woods Welford Road to experience a Tigers game day, seeing up close how a club rooted in the city's history brings its community together every week.
The highlight of the month, however, came when the class was welcomed behind the scenes at Leicester City FC for a module field visit. We had the privilege of hearing from club officials about how LCFC operates and the vision that guides it, a conversation that brought our classroom discussions vividly to life. The moment everyone is still talking about, though, came in the home dressing room, where Carlos stepped up to deliver a speech worthy of any pre-match team talk.
On the academic side, October brought our first real taste of assessment. After our September field trip to Wimbledon, the class delivered the Wimbledon presentation, our first assessment of the FIFA Master and a first chance to see how each of us thinks, argues and presents under pressure. Those were followed by our History of Sport essays, and for a couple of weeks the library and our kitchens became quiet study places, with the usual mix of late nights, shared reading notes and a lot of coffee. We also took our first steps in the CIES Career Readiness Programme, with a careers’ day led by Matteo Tassi that pushed us to think seriously about where we want this year to take us, and what we need to do to get there.
October was also a month of welcoming new faces into the FIFA Master family, as several of us were joined by visiting family members and partners. Showing them around the city, the campus and the friends we now spend almost every day with was a reminder of how quickly Leicester has started to feel like home. And to make it official, the 27th edition finally got to review its class profile brochure, twenty-eight smiling faces from twenty-two nations, captured for the record.
The month saved two of its best moments for the very end. First, our official FIFA Master football kits arrived, and for a group of people who have spent their careers around football shirts, the excitement was hard to hide. Then, as October drew to a close, the class swapped those kits for costumes to celebrate Halloween together. This was the perfect way to close a month that had given us a little bit of everything.
By the time the clocks went back at the end of the month, it felt like we had squeezed a whole season into a few weeks. The weather may have turned, but the energy in the class has not. With the Humanities module entering its next chapter and Milan already appearing on the horizon, one thing is certain, the 27th edition is only just warming up.
By Mohamed M. Salaheldin – FIFA Master 27th edition student
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FIFA Master - International Master in Management, Law and Humanities of Sport, ranked Europe's No.1 course a record 14 times by SportBusiness and No.2 in the world.
Organised by CIES in cooperation with De Montfort University (UK), SDA Bocconi School of Management (Italy) and the University of Neuchâtel (Switzerland).
