Brother's Keeper

Not every country is similarly agnostic about the talent of the players it sends to compete. Ryan Murray, a 23-year-old from Glasgow who’d played in Celtic FC’s youth program before “heading down the wrong path” and winding up in prison, told me that he and his seven teammates were chosen from over 1,000 players at the Street Soccer Scotland Trials back in May. (Scotland has won two Homeless World Cups.) Other powerhouse teams earned the right to represent their countries by triumphing in national street soccer competitions.

While the rules of the Homeless World Cup state that all participants must be given “a reasonable amount” of playing time, this appears subject to interpretation; Brazil, whose second-stringers showed enough futebol artistry to humiliate most early-round opponents, stuck with their starters once they reached the knockout round. (Their dramatic 8-7 semifinal loss to hosts Chile was also the only time I witnessed a lapse in sportsmanship in a tournament where the overall comportment of players was so consistently civil that it makes your average rec. league game look like the Siege of Stalingrad.)

Critics of this unabashed in-it-to-win-it approach might object that sending a semi-pro team to an all-comers event might undermine the Homeless World Cup’s reformative potential. On the other hand, it seems reasonable to assume that that reformative potential is more likely to be realized when your squad is on the right side of an 11-1 blowout. But talent disparity at the Homeless World Cup is also a reflection of how the cause and definition of homelessness in place like Norway (whose men’s squad finished 30th overall) will be radically different than in Namibia (7th). At the risk of glossing over an incredibly complex problem, the general trend at the Homeless World Cup is that players representing affluent social welfare states are more likely to have a history of substance abuse than players coming from countries with widespread poverty. This makes for a different kind of soccer player.

The Cup. Photo: Martin Fritz Huber

“When they’re coming out of recovery, they’re never going to be necessarily the most talented footballers. That’s the way that homelessness and drug addiction structures itself in a country like, say, Switzerland,” Mel Young, the gregarious co-founder of the Homeless World Cup told me. Young, whose longish coiffure and protruding ears make him look like a mash-up of Rod Stewart and Yoda, explained that one of the central challenges of the tournament was finding a way to simultaneously accommodate the teams with novice, post-rehab players, and the teams that are overflowing with talent. Young compared his Switzerland example to “a country like Brazil where there’s so much poverty and people sitting in the category of homelessness that… the football is about the football; football is the driver out. So it’s because the definition is slightly different from country to country and the way that people use it [i.e. the Homeless World Cup] is different, it’s always a challenge for us.”

After the first few games, teams are put into groups according to skill level. Another round of play ensues before they are regrouped for the “Cup Stage,” where all teams are still competing for something, but only the best will be vying for the top prize. Such logistical maneuvering makes for thrilling late-stage matchups, like this year’s quarterfinal between Chile and the Netherlands, and helps prevent lopsided affairs like Chile’s opener against Argentina, whose roster includes an affable, fedora-wearing geriatric named Anibal.

Uniforms are hot commodities

Beyond the organizational hurdles the Homeless World Cup faces each year (e.g.: securing visas for hundreds of individuals who, as you can probably imagine, are not the folks you want waiting in front of you in the immigration line), the overriding objective of the tournament is to help demonstrate that animosity towards homeless people is ultimately a matter of perception.

Mel Young will tell anyone who cares to listen: give a homeless person a uniform and a tournament environment, and you are creating a context where, as Mel puts it, “people are cheering them, rather than walking away.” (Uniforms are hot commodities at the Homeless World Cup. I never witnessed greater jubilation than when Angela Draws, a 35-year-old, platinum-haired member of Team USA’s women’s squad scored a “Hellas” jersey from the Greek team; Ms. Draws hails from northern California, where “hella” is everyone’s favorite modifier.) When I was speaking to Sergei Newman, a 21-year-old player on Team USA who’d spent months on the streets of Portland, Oregon, begging for food money, we were interrupted by a young local woman who wanted a picture of Sergei holding her child.

from ffffff http://roadsandkingdoms.com/2014/brothers-keeper/

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