Homeless World Cup is soccer therapy for the forgotten

[IRiSHMaFIA]

CAPE TOWN, South Africa (Reuters) -- Many of the soccer players representing their countries in an international tournament in South Africa this week were remarkably gaunt, sallow-looking and groomed haphazardly.

They looked, in fact, as if they had spent the past few years living on the streets. Indeed, that is where these improbable athletes had been spending much of their time before arriving at the Homeless World Cup in Cape Town.

The annual tournament, now in its fourth year and ending on Saturday, has brought together 500 players from 48 countries in a project aimed at helping homeless people turn their lives around.

"It helps primarily in terms of psychological changes ... homeless people have no self-respect, little self-esteem," Mel Young, president and co-founder of the group that organizes the competition, said in an interview.

The idea behind the tournament was to give participants an aim in life, and for those addicted to drugs or alcohol, an incentive to sober up.

"What happens here is a major thing. They're standing singing the national anthem, they're representing their country proudly, they're playing in a competition which is real, and people are according them respect and taking them seriously," Young said.

Interest in the Homeless World Cup has come from many quarters. South African President Thabo Mbeki opened the tournament last Sunday, and top professionals from clubs like Manchester United and South Africa's Kaizer Chiefs have offered to help train players.

Vocal crowds of around 2,000 have flocked to the matches, held on a large parking lot in central Cape Town.

The pace of the matches is fast; four players on each team play two seven-minute periods on a pitch the size of a tennis court.

"It's very fast, it's hard, it's high scoring, it's great for spectators," said Johannes Krasa, 34, who plays for Austria. "There's non-stop action. I love it."

The traditional skills of conventional soccer do not always help in these street soccer games, as the English side found when they were defeated 5-3 in the preliminary rounds by Kazakhstan, most of whose squad are paunchy and over 30.

England's Tony Peacock, 18, admitted to being overconfident. "We thought we're all young guys, fit, and if you look at the Kazakhstan players ... well. But they know how to use the ball."

Krasa said the Kazakhstan players illustrated the principle that you cannot judge a person by appearances, adding that he had learned a lot on his trip to South Africa.

"When I see the situation in Africa, I know that although I am a homeless man, I am a rich man in comparison ... I have really nothing, but they (Africans) have nothing ... I don't know how they can live," he said.

Surveys conducted after the previous Homeless World Cup, held in Scotland, showed that 80 percent of those who took part had changed their lives for the better in major ways.

"They came off drugs, got houses, got training, got jobs," Young said.

The tournament was first held in 2003 in Austria with just five countries competing.

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I think that's a brilliant idea, and it's good to see it's actually getting results

[maycm]

Somalia Defeats Rwanda To Win Third-World Cup

KHARTOUM, SUDAN?The host city of the 2006 Developing Nations Football Championship erupted in cheers that nearly drowned out the cries of the starving and wounded Tuesday when the underdog Somali side, playing four down due to injuries and landmines, outlasted the more experienced if disease-ridden Rwandans 1-0 to win the inaugural Third-World Cup.

"This is a relatively great day for Somalia," said team captain Omar Bin-Shakur, the seasoned veteran whose rise from squalor in the violent ghettoes of Mogadishu to stardom in the squalid and violent ghettoes of the Sudan is already passing into legend. "It seemed like nothing could stop us in the title match?not the great Rwandan defender Bimenyimana, not the mortar strikes, not the rotting cow in midfield, not dysentery?nothing."

"They were simply the better team today," Rwandan star Calvin Bimenyimana said, speaking to reporters as the soccer stadium was transformed from a football pitch back to its usual function as an outdoor prison for Darfur refugees awaiting execution. "Yet I am extremely proud of my mates. They did well just to get here, especially after the Sierra Leone match in which Nicodemus was red-carded and shot, and our epic battle with Chad, in which they came at us with rocket-propelled grenades when our team bus attempted to cross the border into the Sudan."

Bimenyimana, whose youth coaches in Rwanda considered him a natural for the sport after his hands were chopped off with machetes in 1994, was chosen as the Nestl? Man Of The Match by fans, the first-ever Third-World Cup participant from the losing side to be chosen. However, some aficionados say that Bimenyimana played a lackluster game; at press time, FIFA-3 officials were investigating reports that armed gunmen had shot and killed hundreds at designated Nestl? Man Of The Match voting stations.

Somalia was only a fifth seed entering the Cup tournament, and while the Third-World Cup rankings are considered notoriously inaccurate, the nation's weak midfield, inexperienced goalkeeper, and devastatingly low rates of economic growth and standards of press freedom seemed to indicate that they would be eliminated in the early rounds.

"Certainly it did not look good for us going in to be placed with Afghanistan, host team Sudan, and the [Democratic Republic Of The] Congo," said Somali coach Abdi Qani. "But every other team was at the mercy of the same sporting and economic factors. In the Third-World Cup, every group is the Group Of Death."

After only surviving the first round due to inspired play, UN-supplied antibiotics, and a forfeit during the Sudan game when four Sudanese players seized control of their team and shot eight others during penalty time, Somalia assumed the unexpected status of the tournament's Team Of Destiny.

"Never have the words 'win or go home' provided such inspiration to any team," Bin-Shakur said. "I am overcome with joy, as well as hunger, and I look forward to bringing the Third-World Cup trophy home to my country."

The Third-World Cup trophy, an AK-47 coated with gold spray-paint and mounted on a pallet of United Nations staple foods, has already been seized by Somali troops and distributed amongst ranking military officers.
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(Satire)

[faceless]

[janbo1960]

Its better to play football than have them killing each other...... pity there was no TV coverage!!

[IRiSHMaFIA]

[janbo1960]