By Armstrong Vas
Doha: The Homeless World Cup - a unique, pioneering social movement which uses football to inspire homeless people to change their lives - has positively impacted the lives of 1 million people around the globe, an official of the event said.
“We now work with a minimum hundred thousand people every year, we have worked with millions so far, as some of them have got jobs and some have become professional players. Some have got jobs as bus driver, waiter that does not matter, as they are in society as it is successful we keep doing more and we want more in the world,” Mel Young Co-founder of the Homeless World Cup said.
Each year, Homeless World Cup network of global street football partners select 500 players to compete in the annual Homeless World Cup tournament.
Among the street soccer players who have made it big one of them is former Manchester United striker from Portugal Bebe, currently on loan for Spanish club Rayo Vallecano from Benfica.
“It’s not a big percentage (professional players), but a small one. We have two or three in Brazil, one of the players particularly, a young player, he is very talented and he may break through, you never know. Then we had a player who was with our Portugal partners but was not selected for the Homeless World Cup but he signed for Manchester United, a guy called Bebe. Another Brazilian woman player is a professional now, full time professional, she was picked after the homeless world cup and so now plays in an 11-side game. They are a number of them, it’s fascinating,” said Young.
Explaining the concept of the Homeless World Cup the official said: “We work with 74 countries around the world; you are only allowed to come only once to a Homeless World Cup because the whole idea is that you are moving away so you are not homeless anymore. This is generally the case as we have nearly had 90 percent change, so homeless people get jobs and houses.”
“Once a year we have an event (Cup), every year we do this, the best players in the country represent their country at the Homeless World Cup. This year it is in Amsterdam in Holland, last year it was in Santa Tiago in Chile, and we have 48 men’s and 16 women’s countries this year.
“The annual event is something spectacular, crowds come, it’s amazing and the players behavior is fabulous and so we came up with this idea in 2001, as I was working with homeless people, a friend of mine and me were talking casually and we came up with the idea and we made it happen. We have one partner per country and they work across the country.” The Homeless World Cup Young said is a simple organization which works with the homeless people and the poorest of the poor.
“We simply go to the street with the ball and say would you like to play and it is very simple to do, cause and it is a very simple game to play, you can be very good or not, does not matter and you can play in the street anywhere, and so we go were homeless people are and we say to them ‘hey would like to play a game now? And normally they say ‘yes, why not’. And so we begin to work with them, we say welcome back tomorrow and the next day and the next day and we create teams and we create pathways out of the street,” he explained.
The movement is spreading and some countries like Mexico are having their own regional champions and followed by the national championship.
“ Mexico for example has competitions in 32 regions and then they have a national cup, so the guy organizing the cup will hold 33 competitions before coming to the World Cup and has 20,000 players are playing, so it is a major impact.”
Young said sports have a much bigger role to play in impacting the life of the poorest of the poor.
“There are too many problems in the world some getting worse. Sport has a major role because of the ethics and values it has in it, that should be like things like fair play that we all should understand as human beings so that we should create this fair play, sports has that and so that if we can translate that in the wider community then we can achieve something very positive.”
Young said there is an urgent to bridge the gap between elite sports and other sports and he said Doha Goals Forum, an organization which aims to bring about social and economic change with sports as a medium, is leading the way.
“The Doha Goals Forum is interesting, and the way it is constructed, like all conferences. Because you got different layers of thinking, and it should be like that, so have the elite sports, that’s there (at the top) we love it, we love the last minutes goals and all the stuff.
“But sports at different levels can make a major impact and we have showed actually by working with the poorest of the poor, how you can make an impact, so we can have these discussions and improve things.
“But at the moment it is the elite which has all the money and the power and although we love it is to somehow we have to join it up a bit, so everyone agrees on that, so how to connect the two and move and this intervention by the Doha Goals is very positive,” he added.
The Peninsula
