Pana-mania

He is the man responsible for putting Panama on the footballing map... and he’s English.

Gary Stempel, 60, is a name that won’t resonate with most British sports fans, but in the country nicknamed the Heart of the Universe he’s God.

In 2009, thanks to Stempel’s leadership, Panama won their first ever major international championship, lifting the Central American Nations Cup.

Months later he guided the small nation, which has a population of just over 4 million, to a quarter-final berth in the Gold Cup.

It was an achievement that kick-started a love of the beautiful game they call ‘futbol’ with the Panamanian people.

And it was all because of an Englishman called Gary.

Stempel was born on January, 26 1957 in Panama City to a British mother and Panamanian professional baseball-playing father.

At the age of 5, his family decided to move back to England and set-up home in east Finchley, north London.

It was there Stempel, playing football in the school playground, became engrossed in sport.

A keen Arsenal fan, he was a regular at Highbury and began studying tactics with the belief he wanted to work in management one day.

He took a job at Millwall as a community outreach officer in the mid 1980s, patiently completing his coaching badges with a masterplan in mind.

After 10 years at The Old Den, Stempel took a calculated gamble and moved back to Panama with his family in 1996.

But he initially found the transition difficult, with the country he called home lacking the infrastructure for professional football.

In fact, football was well down the pecking order in terms of sports the kids were playing in the streets.

Baseball was more popular, thanks in part to New York Yankees Panamanian pitcher Mariano Rivera.

Even boxing had a far bigger reach than football.

To make ends meet, Stempel took jobs in soccer schools and picked up coaching roles along the way.

Helped by the coaching badges he attained in England, as well as being fluent in Spanish, his football career started to flourish.

Stempel landed a job with the national under-22 team, and achieved unthinkable success.

In a rare taste of success for Los Canaleros, they achieved a silver medal at the 1997 Central American Games.

What was even more remarkable was Stempel built that youth team from unsigned players he found on the dusty streets of Panama City.

“The footballers here are streetkids and every one of them has a dysfunctional character,” he said at the time.

“Some of my players don’t know who their dad is. Some have mothers in jail and work two or three jobs around training to provide for their brothers and sisters.”

Stempel then took a job at ANAPROF, now Liga Panamena de Futbol, club Panama Viejo from 1998-2001, where he found even more success.

The now defunct side won two championships during his tenure and his profile began to rise.

It was from there he was trusted with managing both the national under 21 and Under 23 Panama national teams.

Stempel had to be ready for anything the hostile central American nations would throw at him, including urine.

“In my first major game as coach of the Panama under-21, I had to give my half time team talk drenched in urine after walking through the tunnel behind a referee who was getting bags full of the stuff thrown at him,” he recalled of his early experiences.

But now he had the Panamanian people starting to take note of their soccer team, albeit at youth level.