These Panama street kids can trouble England’s stars

IAM incredibly proud. I have seen the sacrifices of these boys and their parents. This started off as a small dream and we thought ‘Maybe one day, far away, we can do a World Cup’. It’s unbelievable.

When I started working with the Under 22 team in 1996, the facilities were as basic as you can get.

There were no showers. We trained on gravel. Players had holes in their boots. We had to borrow a water bucket from the local church. Even now, Panama does not have a professional league. The only proper grass pitch is the national stadium. Panama had heroes in other sports, such as boxing legend Roberto Duran and Mariano Rivera of the New York Yankees baseball team. Now we hope football has taken off.

The president, Juan Carlos Varela, was here for the first game against Belgium. There was a huge debate in the country, at cabinet level, about whether to have national holidays for each Panama World Cup game.

Around 90 per cent of the population will tune in for the England game! The real measure will be after the World Cup. Will there be progress? We hope so.

I am one of four people the federation has invited to travel with the squad as a special guest, so I am on their chartered plane and spending time with the squad. The players felt they put up a great fight in the first half against Belgium. They didn’t make fools of themselves. These are street kids and they are relishing it. They are not locked away on PlayStations. They are going into the town, mixing with fans, seeing the sights to broaden their horizons. They can cause England problems.

I saw Romelu Lukaku and Kevin De Bruyne becoming frustrated against us when things were not working.

Roman Torres, who scored the goal that took us to the World Cup, is one of the main men in defence. He started with me aged 17, one of 200 kids who came to a trial. Some had boots with holes, some had one boot on, one off. Roman was a forward on the street but so many forwards turned up to trial he pretended to be a defender. It’s that streetsmart thinking that took him to the World Cup.