ARGENTINA: Street Soccer World Cup Boosts Dignity for Homeless

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Jul 24 2004 (IPS) - "We players are all dreaming and none of us wants to wake up," said Alejandro Martínez, the captain of the Argentine team on its way to the second Homeless World Cup, to be held in Gothenburg, Sweden from Jul. 25 to Aug. 1.

"We players are all dreaming and none of us wants to wake up," said Alejandro Martínez, the captain of the Argentine team on its way to the second Homeless World Cup, to be held in Gothenburg, Sweden from Jul. 25 to Aug. 1.

For this challenge could not be further from the daily routine for Martínez and his team mates.

"I was so hungry on the streets, so cold, and I never dreamed I would be doing anything like this," the 34-year-old amateur footballer told IPS on the eve of his first-ever trip abroad.

The team trained three times a week for almost four months. Of the roughly 30 players, their Peruvian coach, Luis Reyes, selected the best to travel to Sweden. Sadly, Reyes himself then had to be replaced by Sergio Rotman as the Swedish government turned down his visa application.

"The documentation issue is a nightmare," said Patricia Merkin, director of the magazine Hecho en Buenos Aires (HBA or Made in Buenos Aires), produced by an International Network of Street Papers (INSP) member organisation and sold by around 250 homeless vendors in the Argentine capital.

In her conversation with IPS, Merkin admitted ignorance of the finer points of football, but said the Homeless World Cup is "explosive" because "it highlights major geo-political problems."

For instance, in the case of Reyes, "the organisers would have liked to get a letter from the Swedish government giving permission for all the team members to enter the country, but that didn’t happen," she explained.

The Austrian team had trouble too, added Merkin. There were some Afghan and African refugees amongst their number who had trouble getting permission to enter Sweden, and the same thing happened in the case of homeless players from Cameroon and Namibia.

"They don’t want a bunch of social outcasts to come," she said. "They are afraid they will stay."

The first Homeless World Cup was organised by INSP in Austria in 2003 and 18 teams took part – 10 less than this year. Latin America is only represented by Argentina and Brazil – Peru had to drop out at the last moment due to organisational problems.

Next year, New York will host the event, and the following year Cape Town, South Africa.

Street soccer organisers believe the greatest success of the tournament is if each player only participates once – an indication that their personal situation has improved and they have managed to get off the streets.

This was mostly the case for the 2003 teams. Of the 104 players in Austria, 31 now have steady jobs, 12 were offered contracts as professional footballers or coaches, and 49 saw their situations improve in terms of social insertion.

Martínez was a child star for the boys’ division of San Lorenzo – one of Argentina’s leading professional football teams. But "I couldn’t make it to the first division because you had to have money for that and my mother was retired," he said. So he gave up his vocation, found a steady job, got married and had kids.

"I worked for the National Grain Council for six years, monitoring the machines, until we were all laid off – 40 operators – in 1998. After that I worked in construction and house-painting, and my family problems started because of the shortage of money, problems getting along…you know, that kind of thing," said Martínez.

Finally, he separated from his wife a year and a half ago, leaving his four children – all under 10 – and ended up on the streets. After a short time he found work with HBA selling the magazine. Now "I see my children often. They are happy I am going to travel, and they’ve asked me to bring them back little presents," he told IPS.

Martínez now sleeps at night in a shelter run by the city government in Buenos Aires. His roommates treat him like someone famous, simply because he has a national team strip. The Argentine Football Association (AFA) donated equipment and kit, including shirts in the official vertically-striped light-blue and white, although without the AFA insignia.

Martínez says if he wins he will have to buy himself an extra heart to deal with the emotion. "One won’t be enough," he said.

What is most important to him though is simply to play, to have the experience. He has not even thought about the traditional football rivalry between neighbouring Argentina and Brazil, whose teams could end up playing against each other in the Homeless World Cup.

Brazil’s Civil Organisation for Social Action (OCAS) is taking its homeless team to the World Cup for the second time. This year, their football training has been complemented by English lessons so that players will be able to communicate with their counterparts from Europe, Asia and Africa.

So far, Austria, Cameroon, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Namibia, Nigeria, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Scotland, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the Ukraine and the United States have all confirmed they will attend the event along with Argentina and Brazil.

Another player representing Argentina is Hugo Gómez, 44. He also played in a top football club, but never managed to make a career for himself. In October 2001, he moved from the eastern city of Rosario to Buenos Aires, just two months before the country’s economic, social and political collapse.

"I was out of work, I was having a bad time with drink and I was living like a bum," Gómez, who is also travelling abroad for the first time, told IPS. His family asked him to leave home and that was his "salvation."

A few days after leaving home, Gómez began to hawk HBA magazines in the streets. At first he slept in a subway station but now he earns enough to pay for a room in a cheap hotel for most of the month.

Merkin explained that the project objectives include the social reinsertion of the homeless. The aim is "for them to work as a team, to recover their ties of solidarity through sports, for them to feel part of society again."

And it works, she said. Last Wednesday the team was being interviewed for TV in a café in the upscale Recoleta neighbourhood of Buenos Aires, wearing their team uniforms, when a woman with a child in her arms came up and asked them if they could spare some change.

"They couldn’t believe it. That they were on the other side for a moment," she said.

"This is a very positive experience for them. It is a stimulus for those who are left behind too, many of whom are right now playing football in front of our offices," she added.

As for those who are going, the pride helps restore their lost self-esteem. "Just imagine it, them, the dispossessed, who live in the streets, travelling to Europe to represent Argentina. It really is a dream come true," she concluded. (END/2004)