DOES THE AMAL 3'S STORY... MAKE SENSE?

Maci Gian

To say the Amal Three were the strangest set of players to join the Sultans would be an understatement. Three players that apparently grew up in an abandoned stadium, who did nothing but practice soccer while they were growing up, then just so happened to find their way to the Sheikh’s door? If this story was given to the Super League by any other player, they’d be laughed at and turned away… Yet when the Amal 3 presented it, they were embraced.

They even claimed to had evidence of their childhood circumstances, and proudly displayed it to the public. While it’s true photographic evidence can be reliable, it’s also true that it doesn’t show us everything.

Before we address the photos, it’s important we look at the story itself:

“The triplets were found at a young age, abandoned in a dusty small town dusty soccer stadium. They only thing they had with them was an old soccer ball, and the rags on their backs…

…How they came to be there, nobody knows, but they would never be separated. Not from one another, nor their beloved ball.” (Source: How the Amal Three came to be - A Documentary & Interview with the Sultans newest Stars)

The Amal Three’s documentary, funded by the Sheikh himself, was quick to win over the hearts of not just the thousands of Sultans fans, but of Super League fans from all over the world. It covered how the Amal 3 grew up, how they felt throughout their childhood, what it felt like to only have each other while living in an abandoned stadium, and how they pushed themselves to train constantly to become masters at soccer, and that’s where the first issue comes in… There’s a lot of ‘feelings’.

There’s nothing wrong with implementing emotions into your work, even if it’s in an informative piece of media, the issue is when it’s only feelings being focused on. When you really pay attention to the documentary and the interviews, the triplets’ story is primarily about their feelings throughout their hardships, yet they never go into depth over what their hardships were besides the vague: “Grew up in an abandoned stadium.”

Their vagueness doesn’t stop with their past either. Whenever they were asked about their skills, they’d simply respond with: “We’re good.”, or when asked how they practice for upcoming games, they’d say: ”We’re working hard.”

Another point I’d like to discuss—and one I’d like to debunk—was the infamous claim that the triplets had telekinesis. Many people, not just fans, but those within the Super League, firmly believed the Amal 3 were somehow able to communicate via telepathy, despite the fact they never made such a claim.

In fact, no one in the Sultans made the claim. The closest we got was from the Sheikh himself saying: “Three soccer geniuses, each able to call the move without speaking.”

I, and a good handful of other people, had interpreted the Sheikh’s words as: “The players are on the same page and can understand their signals perfectly, to the point they don’t need to speak to each other.” Which was most likely what the Sheikh was trying to say, albeit with more ’flair’.

But for some reason, the idea of ’mind-reading’ came up, and a large portion of the community ran with it. The fallout that took place after the Sultans’ match against Supa Strikas already exposed the Amal 3 for all their faults, so to see people trying to lump a rumor that wasn’t even perpetrated by them in the first place was baffling to me.

They also received backlash for cheating, but from watching and rewatching the games they partook in before the Sheikh exiled them (and trust me, there was a lot to watch), their worst offense seemed to be swapping jerseys to confuse the opposition. Compared to other cheating scandals committed in the Super League? This is practically nothing. Toni Vern had stolen and used Supa Strikas’ Secret Training Manual against them, Vince had mass produced knock-offs of Cool Joe’s shoes that weighed the team down, I think a simple shirt change isn’t hurting anyone.

Heck, they aren’t even the first players to commit such a ’heinous’ act. Technicali players have admitted in the past they have swapped uniforms before without realizing it. According to them, they’d usually be in a rush to games and would often put on their uniform as soon as they were ready in a neighboring laundromat. This rush leads to them neglecting to check the back of each uniform, and with how elastic they were, everyone could fit into each other’s outfit without a hassle.

Though one could give the technological team a pass since they weren’t doing it with ill intent.

I’ve seen fans argue that the hand signals the triplets used for one another was a form of cheating, which I’m still very confused by, since nearly every other team has used this method before without an uproar.

Now onto the claims that were made by the Amal 3.

“They grew up in an abandoned stadium.” Right off the bat, this presents so many questions with not enough answers.

Where was this stadium located? What was it called? These questions might be ’unnecessary’, because the answer is technically already present: “It’s been abandoned, nobody knows anything about it.” But I think it’s very necessary to still ask them.

Stadiums are huge, they can fit hundreds to thousands of people, they have signs outside with their names on full display, they have giant parking lots, how on earth can an entire stadium be glossed over?

It’s not like the place was falling apart or torn down, leaving little traces left, the photos clearly show the stadium mostly intact, save for the seats and scoreboard being gone, but there were flags, banners, and most importantly, tunnels where the interior of the stadium was visible. This implies not only the field intact, but at least a good portion of the interior as well. I find it hard to believe a standing stadium with decoration just-so-happened to have no name plastered on it.

But let’s say there were no names, labels, not even symbols… How on earth did nobody but the Amal 3 know about this stadium? Was it built in the middle of nowhere? Hopefully they didn’t expect us to believe that nobody knew about this abandoned stadium or the fact they ‘grew up there’, because their own documentary shows us this isn’t true: Someone photographed them.

I’ll quickly jump to the Amal 3’s defense before delving deeper into this, but I remember as soon as they were exposed, many critics immediately labeled the photos as ’fake’. The most common theories being: Digital photo manipulation, or the directors of the documentary hired kids that resembled the triplets and green screened an abandoned stadium. For all the flaws the Amal 3’s story has, I can say with confidence that the photos are legit (but I’ll get to this in a moment).

Now back to the photographs. The existence of them implies a journalist, photographer, someone had found the stadium and found the triplets within it. This uncredited individual found the place, explored it, discovered three kids, and were around them long enough to learn they played soccer.

Here’s my biggest question: Was there really no follow up?

Someone found three kids who looked like they weren’t taken care of, with no signs of any guardians, and didn’t do anything? Nothing was delved into further? They didn’t ask the young triplets any questions? They didn’t file any report? No one went to help them after the photos were released to the public?

When the triplets were asked about this period of their lives, they stuck to their story, and recited a condescend portion of their documentary: “We grew up in a stadium together. We only had each other.”

No further elaboration.

One could argue that they were kids, not everyone remembers childhood perfectly, but it’s really strange that this was the only thing they remember.

Well, luckily for them, it seemed someone else did the remembering for them. Check this out:

A physical news paper featuring the exact photos shown from the documentary. Unfortunately it seems like age and water damage had worn away parts of the paper, but this is a big revelation nonetheless.

This was scanned and archived by another, sadly now deactivated, soccer site. When clicking on any link directed to the site, I’m taken to a 404 page. However, I was able to look up the name of the site itself (for those curious, it’s littleleaguesbignews.org), and got several screen shots, alongside a good handful of other scanned papers, posters, and even merchandise that belonged to a variety little league teams and soccer communities, including the infamous Amal 3 photos.

I’ve tried to upscale the quality, but since it’s connected to a broken site, linking to pages that don’t exist anymore, I’m stuck with this.

If you look close at the paper, though, you’ll find a very interesting section: "Members of [nearby?] communities have started using the abandoned stadium for their own soccer games!...Among these visitors are a pair of triplets, Aziz, Akbar, and Alam, young boys who are seen playing [at the?] stadium [constantly].”

They’re describing the Amal 3 like visitors, not residents. The way this is worded, there might’ve been other people around this stadium that shared it with the boys. The paper has more focus on the stadium itself rather than who resides within it, or rather, who visits.

I do not doubt the Amal 3 grew up struggling, if anything, that’s the one detail throughout all of their stories that has stayed the most consistent. I even believe they probably stayed at the abandoned stadium more than their home, as they’ve never once mentioned their family, and no one has ever come out and proclaimed their connections with them. Though never directly stated, Aziz, the ’head’ of the triplets’ most likely took on a guardian role for his other brothers, as he was always seen close to and aiding them. These are facts I’ve never doubted, and if anything, they’re the facts that are most tragic, and I wish weren’t true.

I don’t think the Amal 3 were lying about everything, however, I do believe they were picking and choosing their truths. But why would they do that?

We actually get an answer from one of their interviews with Lean Long:

They wanted. They wanted anything that caught their eye, anything that made them feel spoiled, anything that made them feel good, but you couldn’t just get whatever you wanted because ’You’re good.’

Every Super League player is ’good’, that fact alone isn’t enough to boost the Amal 3 so high, so that’s when their story came in.

Being skilled and practicing every day isn’t some grand accomplishment, it’s the norm in the League, but what if you gave people additional context? What if you told people you started from nothing? What if you showed them the few snippets of your childhood that remained where you grew up with hardly anything or anyone, and all you knew your entire life was how to play soccer? What if you managed to tug at the heart strings of the right coach and get accepted into their team with little questions asked?

Or if we want to use the more blunt, condescend version of what they’ve done: Guilt tripping.

Who wants to be known as the coach who turned away 3 boys without a family? They were already racking up plenty of attention with their ‘Three blind mice’ routine, among other performances, and they did have the skills to back it up, who would want to deny them? And if you’re a certain coach with enough money to provide them with a life they’ve never had…

I don’t think it’s random chance that the Amal 3 just-so-happened to be closest to the Sultans and their home stadium around the same time games were happening. They’d draw in crowds, they got their stories to spread all over the Super League until they finally got the attention they wanted, and they ran with it.

They got their own documentary, t-shirts, action figures, posters, parties hosted purely to celebrate them, jersey numbers that went against Super League rules, anything and everything they wanted, the Sheikh gave.

There isn’t any shame in wanting to splurge or be spoiled after hardships, but when you’re constantly bringing up your struggles as a way to ‘subtly nudge’ people to give you what you want, and not being fully transparent to those helping you, it makes the situation much more eyebrow raising than you’d think. There’s a huge difference between requesting and demanding, which the Amal 3 never denied doing.

They wanted to see how long they could get away with brushing aside the ’little’ details, and how much they could wring out of the Sheikh. They didn’t care about how their other players felt, nor taking from them, because they were the ones who struggled the most, and that justified special treatment. The Sheikh was generous enough to give, and give, and give, only for the rug to be pulled out from underneath him that fateful game against Supa Strikas.

The Amal 3’s failure that day lead to a domino effect for not just the Sheikh, but for all of their fans. If they so openly lied about the three of them being ‘amazingly skilled’, the people wanted to find out what else they lied about, and though not everything was discovered, enough was for a majority of their fanbase to die off, and for the Sheikh to do away with two of the three triplets, with Aziz being the only one left, and always told to remain on the bench.

I’m not going to make the assumption that the Amal 3 are all malicious, that they carefully calculated this entire situation and alliance with the Sultans to get whatever they wanted. I think this was them seeing an opportunity to have a more luxurious life, and doing whatever they could to claim it, not realizing how shoddy the plan they came up with was, and how easily it could crumble apart… Until it did.

Were the Amal 3 skilled? Yes. Were they truly as good as they claimed? No. As to why they weren’t fully transparent, we may never know, but I feel if they had been honest, or had they not been as demanding, their fate might have been preventable. Do I think they should’ve separated after they got exposed? After everything they’ve been through, I’m surprised they even considered it, but perhaps that was the final straw for Aziz.

Or perhaps the Sheikh decided to keep Aziz for the same reason the triplets shared specific portions of their lives: He only wanted to keep the ‘good’ part.