Interview: Man Utd assitant coach Carlos Queiroz

Carlos Queiroz (in blue shirt) is visiting Mozambique with a BBC team

Manchester United assistant coach Carlos Queiroz is in Mozambique - the land of his birth - with the BBC World Service to make a documentary about the power of football as a positive force for social change.

During his trip Queiroz will be keeping a diary for this website.

Here you can follow his thoughts as the former Real Madrid boss explores how football instil a spirit of goodwill in Mozambique, a country with a recent history of natural disasters and civil conflict.

"We visited Mozambique Island, a tiny island on the country's north-east coast, where I spent part of my childhood.

When i was six and seven years old I would spend all day playing football on the beach.

Nothing has really changed here - the kids are still there, playing barefoot just like I did 40 years ago.

I stopped for a game in the street where I used to play. The kids had made their own ball, using string to tie together things they can find along the street.

Mozambique island used to be home to about 5,000 people. But today there are almost 20,000 people living here and the island is hopelessly overcrowded.

Many people fled to this place during the civil war in mainland Mozambique and they don't want to return there.

They live here in terrible conditions. Most of them don't have running water or basic sanitation, and the children here are at great risk from diseases.

They also have nothing to do. With the desperation of poverty comes things like gangs and crime.

That's why there is a football project starting here to keep the kids active and engaged in education.

As soon as the ball starts rolling, you can see the smiles return to their faces.

For the rest of my Manchester United colleagues it was a relatively short journey back up to Manchester from London after our 3-2 victory over Fulham.

My journey was somewhat longer, I got straight into a taxi and 18 hours later I was stepping off a plane at home in Mozambique.

Of course I return regularly to Mozambique but this time it is special to be here with the BBC because they have power to reach millions of people all over the world.

When you are away from Africa for a long time sometimes you feel that you might lose touch with your roots but as soon as I arrive home and step off the plane it was as if I had gone back in time 30 years.

Here in Mozambique football is not just a passion, it can also bring people together and help overcome many different challenges.

So to launch our visit we gave a press conference in Maputo and after that it was off to the airport to board a flight to Nampula - my home town in the north of Mozambique, where my football career began.