Eduardo Campillo, class of 2017, hails from Mexico, but you hardly need to be told that because of how often he wears a Mexican football team jersey. His incessant dad jokes and manic laughter can be heard from the other side of the field, giving players on both teams a reason to smile. His strong leadership on and off the field has the power to lift up team spirit, no matter the score, and this has been recognized in his time as captain of the men’s football team.

####People are always saying that the football team are always a group. Do you think that that community was already there when you came to NYUAD? Or was that something that built up as we moved to Saadiyat?

No. As it became more intensive, it became more unified. It definitely wasn’t in my freshman year. Sophomore year, a little bit more but we still had to go to Zayed Sports City every now and then, and we would train far less … but it was getting there. Junior year was different. When I came back for junior year, the feeling was very different. … It’s important that there’s always some kind of figure. A kind of central figure. Having people that force that unity or push towards it, is important. If no one is pushing for that, people might just disband.

####What are some differences between Al Muna and Saadiyat?

The place itself was the size of the performance gym pitch. Maybe a little bit smaller. Synthetic grass. It always felt like intramurals with a little bit more kicking. It was in the afternoon, which was very different. It never had the [feeling of] you’re training, to it. We never ran laps. I don’t remember a single time we did fitness actually, it was mostly just tactics. I remember it was very difficult then, moving from that to playing 11v11. … In terms of the team, as it became much more strict with morning trainings, it became more unified. As it gets harder for you, you also want to be there more, and you want to push harder, and you bond even more. It becomes a cycle.

####What are some key differences between values or goals of the team members from freshman year to now?

There’s a much bigger sense of responsibility now, a responsibility to your teammates. The fact that we wake up every morning to train means that we need to make it worth it, and that’s giving your all when you do play. Even if we lose, at least knowing that all those hours in the morning didn’t go to waste. … Before, it felt like playing around with people from my neighbourhood. I remember we lost every single game, and I couldn’t feel any difference when we lost in intramurals than when we lost in a game. We were also so far from winning that it was like, okay there’s no chance, let’s just have fun.

####Are there any traditions that you associate with the football team other than just training? Anything that you do before a game? For example, I always hear the team clapping. I like that. I think we just wanted to be in sync while we were doing it, I think it gets you in the mindset. It just sounds cool. It sounds even a tiny bit intimidating for the other teams, it’s like our haka … It gets people focused and riled up … When you do the clap thing, it’s also useful because I can tell if someone’s clapping out of rhythm. If someone’s just hanging and not really putting [effort], you can tell, and you can be like, ok, snap snap, come on, it’s game time, let’s get it on! It’s kind of like a screening mechanism.

[A teammate] normally gives a speech inside of the changing room, it always helps. Even if he says the same thing, “give it our all,” it’s always something that I look forward to and that I expect to happen. I feel like it’d be kind of bad luck if it didn’t. It would feel weird, it would feel incomplete.

####Is there anything you learned from Coach or anything that you learned from football that shaped the way that you think about life in general?

Coach plays an important role in keeping us mentally healthy. He is someone who would approach you if he thinks that there’s something going on with you. A lot of the things he does, a lot of his pep talks are not about, okay come on guys, we’ll beat them. It’s more along the lines of you need to put in the effort, you need to wake up every morning. He understands that we’re learning things here that are not just football, they’re for the rest of our lives. Instead of [telling us to] come every morning so that [we] can become better at football, he says [that] in life, you have to wake up at 6 a.m. to go to work everyday and bring the bread home. He understands that dimension and I think that’s important. … I really like what he’s doing about dealing with masculinity. I think that’s a huge part within sports teams generally and it’s something that he’s trying to do. I really applaud him for it. He’s redefining preconceptions about masculinity, that it means to be a strongest, the fastest and the best, and understanding that maybe it means being there for the people you care about, being sensible and to be sensitive and in touch with your friends’ emotions, trying to empathise with them. All these are normally not associated with football.

####What are your hopes for the football team? What kind of legacy would you like to leave behind that when the new freshmen come in, they hear the story that would help in shaping the team spirit?

I think that one of the most important things about it is that it brings people from very different backgrounds together. It’s very intensive, … it’s not like you meet them in the dining hall once every month or week, but everyday. For an hour. Doing teamwork. You’re forced to kind of interact with people, and interact to a point where you need get along, you need to bridge differences. You might not, you don’t need to like everyone but you do need to work with everyone. … It’s important for the community to stay alive. I think that we should be even more available for other people’s problems. But another side is, I don’t want it to become another US varsity team that has all of these problems of like machismo and all of these things that are just, they’re not fun. They’re not the type of sports that you want. … It’s just the stereotype of people that play sports and I do not want that to become the case here. I think that Coach is playing a large part in improving that image, but we also need to pull our own weight. And I think that’s a bigger deal. A much stronger community, being even more present for people who might need us, on and especially outside of the pitch. But also kind of being critical of ourselves as men, as athletes … and just trying to grow emotionally and mentally … using it to become better people, not just better players.