Carlos ‘CK’ Kambaekua
Born in the town of Walvis Bay in 1954, unlike many of his boyhood buddies who liked to kick a football around, Stein started between the sticks. He remained put ever since his acrobatic exploits in goal for the Roman Catholic School football team for natives.
He started playing competitive football for boyhood team Namib Woestyn’s second- strings while barely out of his pair of nappies. However, it was not long before the agile shot-stopper was elevated to the senior team, succeeding regular keeper Cloete.
“Eish… what transpired was that we went to compete in the popular Top 16 knockout cup tournament in Tsumeb. I was still
keeping goal for the second team, but as fate would have it, our regular goalie Cloete
had a bad day in that particular tournament,” recalls the now-retired, soft-spoken goalie.
It’s widely speculated that the usually reliable Cloete was leaking goals as if the art of conceding goals was going out of fashion. As a result, ‘Bro Stein’ was hastily drafted into the starting line-up, and never looked back. He quickly established himself as the rightful owner of the number one jersey.
He helped the silky Desert Camels win silverware in a few August knockout cup tournaments across the country. Having won almost every top honour there was to be won, it was time for the agile goalkeeper to try new challenges.
‘Bro Stein’ calmly jumped off the camel’s back, only to find refuge with the Katutura giants, Black Africa. He also had sporadic spells with the ambitious Khomasdal outfit, Eleven Strangers Football Club. The former Namib Woestyn netguard was lured to the city of bright lights (Windhoek) to replace the departed young shot-stopper Naftali ‘Cake Stroh’ Naobeb.
The latter tiptoed across the border of his motherland to escape the wrath of the racially-motivated apartheid system, alongside some prominent football-playing students and ambitious academics in the following sequence:
Agile shot-stopper Ambassador Japhet ‘The Cat’ Isaack, Israel Kaumbani ‘Sholly’ Tjongarero, Ngururume Katjiku, Bennie Petrus, Manfred ‘Bush’ Menjengua, Micah ‘Capro’ Ngapurue, Obed ‘Moripe’ Muundjua, Simon ‘Lohmeir’ Angula, Issy Murangi, Erich #Khariagab Lambert, Immanuel ‘Fusi’ Semba, Lawrence ‘Zondi’ Amathila, and a few others.
After a few eye-catching displays between the sticks for the Gemengde outfit, Bro Stein was called up to undergo compulsory training with the South African Armed Force, thus ending any further interest in an otherwise flourishing football career which sadly ended abruptly. A former teammate at Namib Woestyn, Bobby Kurtz, describes the agile goalie as a phenomenal shot-stopper.
“Stein was an entertainer of note, a
brilliant goalkeeper in the true sense of the word. One particular match which comes to mind is our encounter with bitter rivals Blue Waters in a knockout cup final in Walvis
Bay. Boy, he was on fire, stopping the marauding Birds’ forwards right in their tracks. Stein had the perfect physique and fantastic temperament for a decent goalkeeper, fearless with a big heart, breathtakingly blocking Bernard da Costa Philemon’s goal-bound shot with his heels, foregoing Columbian flamboyant goalie René Hiquita’s famous high-risk ‘Scorpion Kick’. In fact, what Hiquita did in a friendly match against England in 1995, Stein had already done in 1970 on Namibian soil,” exclaimed Kurtz.