UK Edition
Welcome to the 'other' Champions League - where Charlton are bidding to become the best deaf club in Europe
As more than 90,000 fill the Camp Nou on Tuesday night to watch Barcelona face Manchester United in the Champions League quarter-final, and Liverpool, Manchester City and Tottenham all follow on Wednesday, four other English sides will be vying for their own European glory this week.
A crowd of around 30 have gathered on the sidelines of a local football pitch in New Eltham, south east London, on Monday in the mid-morning April sun. It is a typical match by all accounts, except quieter, less shouts among the players, more gesticulating. Look closer, and the referee is waving a flag similar to the linesman's as well as blowing a whistle, and a handful of the players are wearing hearing aids.
That is because this is the 12th annual Deaf Champions League, and Charlton Athletic Deaf FC this week host clubs from eight countries, including fellow English sides St John's, Doncaster and Fulham, in a bid to be crowned best in Europe.
On Monday, Charlton began their campaign with a 3-0 win over Russian side FC Alania Vladikavkaz, and Steven Wynne, president of the tournament organising committee and a Charlton player, says the DCL is as much about bringing the deaf community together as competing.
"The deaf community is really small in the world really. It’s really important to have this kind of tournament," says Wynne.
"When they asked us to host this competition I thought 'wow', because it’s a big responsibility. But it’s great, and after nine months of arranging and getting sponsors now we can see all the clubs from different countries arriving.
"Events like this don’t happen very often [for deaf football], maybe only once a year. So it’s a really big one for the deaf community."
The club was set up 21 years ago and since 2003 has enjoyed some level of support from Charlton Athletic Community Trust in providing pitch allocations for training, but mostly run independently.
This will be Charlton's first year competing in the DCL and their second place in the domestic league has already secured them a spot in next year's tournament, hosted in Sweden.
But based on their opening result and the scouting on the sidelines at the opening match thriller between Greek side Askbnde Patra and German side IK Surd Gothenburg, which ended 3-3, the hosts are looking to make a real run at the title.
Abdou Jobe, 17, plays for Charlton in the top tier of domestic deaf football and also plays at Conference club Bromley's academy. Like most of his team-mates he played for hearing sides growing up and struggled to communicate at times.
"I use an interpreter at Bromley, but the first hearing team I joined there was no interpreter so it was more difficult for me.
"I wasn’t getting information during the half-time break. I would be playing the second half and I would ask my friends to relay the information to me of what was said at half-time as some could sign a bit."
Despite the lower standard of the deaf football league and his commitments to five training sessions a week with Bromley, he continues to play at Charlton because it is a place where he feels completely understood.
"The hearing league is a higher level, you have better opportunities to go on into professional or semi-professional, but communication can be difficult. I wanted to join a deaf team, I have a deaf identity so I wanted to do both," Jobe says.
At Charlton all the coaches are deaf, and Jobe's team-mate Dayo Bamidele, 23, agrees that this understanding helps. Coming from a household where most of his family communicate with him through speech and a mainstream state school where he had to use an interpreter, his football club is the one place where everyone is speaking his language: sign.
"The best part is the social side to Charlton. Spending time with my friends, going out, having dinner together, going bowling, trips, the banter is much deeper, it’s much more of a laugh.
"With a hearing team there is a barrier. With a deaf team the football is good and the communication is good, it’s 100 per cent perfect."