It’s not the winning, it’s the taking part that counts. Or at least that’s what Víctor Piris says as he defends his team’s final position of 42 out of 48 in this year’s Homeless World Cup in Cape Town.
Víctor Piris (Photo courtesy of Chris Wehling)
And the taking part does seem to have counted – as both Piris, 34, and Adrián Camacho, 36, can testify. Both are vendors of Hecho en Bs As (HBA), the street publication sold by homeless people around Argentina’s capital, and had never travelled overseas before. As a result of the Homeless World Cup (HWC), they have represented their country in both Scotland last year, and this year in South Africa, meeting vendors from 47 countries around the world along the way.
Like so many good things, the idea of the HWC was born in a bar. Harald Schmeid, editor of the Austrian magazine, Megaphone, and Mel Young, co-founder of The Big Issue Scotland, were having a drink at an annual conference of the International Network of Street Publications.
They decided it would be a great if vendors from across the world could do something similar at international level too, so they could meet and exchange experiences and learn from one another. However, exchange programmes were deemed too difficult because of possible visa problems, and also the language barrier.
In the conversation they were lamenting the lack of an international language that people across the world in homeless or disadvantaged situations would be able to understand and communicate in.
“But then we realised there was an international language,” recalls Young. “Football. By the end of the night, we had invented the Homeless World Cup, where teams of vendors from magazines from all over the world could come.”
Four years later, the benefits of the annual football tournaments are obvious, as the statistics show. Just a year after Edinburgh 2005, 12 players who participated now make a living from football either as coaches or players with professional or semi-professional teams.
Adrìan Camacho (Photo courtesy of Chris Wehling)
Of the players, 40% have improved their housing situation and 38% have found regular employment, while 28% have opted to develop their level of education. Perhaps most significantly, 94% of the players were said to have a new motivation for life, with 62 players having gone on to address drug or alcohol dependency problems.
Many street publications have also improved things on a grassroots level, forming regular football programmes as part o f their social inclusion activities.
The game is fast, four-a-side football, and matches last for just 14 minutes, with two halves of seven minutes each way. Teams can bring a maximum of eight players, but many countries opt for less – like HBA, who just took six players to South Africa – due to budget limitations.
And for the lucky six chosen, the 11-day trip has had an enormous effect on their lives. Piris is keen to show me street publications from across the world he exchanged for copies of HBA with fellow players, while Camacho models a football shirt from another team he swapped for his own in Cape Town.
Piris also took copies of HBA to Cape Town and had success selling them around the city. He talks of how friendly the South Africans were towards him, although he doesn’t speak much English.
Representing their country at such a level is obviously something that makes the vendors feel very proud, and although they are not able to play the tournament in Denmark next year (players are only allowed to participate twice), both plan to remain involved with the HWC where they can. Piris plans to travel to Europe to support his team, while Camacho is particularly interested in working on some level in the workshops and conferences – on subjects like racism – that run alongside the football at the tournaments.
And there are many other levels where the teams need support, from the sponsorships and funding of the trip, to just the basic logistics, as Jorge Martinelli, co-founder of HBA, explains. The team is finalised not long before the event, as passports can be hard to get for players (who are often without a fixed address) and some need visas to travel. This year the challenges faced by the organisers were exacerbated as three of the HBA players were not Argentine nationals, coming from Bolivia, Brazil and Perú.
Members of the homeless football team. (Photo courtesy of Chris Wehling)
This potentially perfect combination of South American footballing flair was not to be, with Argentina coming last in their group in the preliminary stages, wining just one point, before eventually slipping some 30 places down the rankings from last year’s position of 13. The passion for football clearly runs through the team’s veins though, as when asked what went wrong, Camacho and Piris argue for about five minutes, before concluding it’s a ‘long story’.
It seems like things just didn’t happen on the day – or any of the seven days for that matter – with Argentina just winning two games, against Cameroon and Norway, in 20 matches.
However, the players are not disheartened, and continue to be regular attendees of a football workshop run by HBA based in Parque Thays every Saturday under the guidance of Luis Reyes Torales. Torales trained to be a coach under another HBA programme, and prior to the cup said he expected his boys ‘to entertain and bring happiness to people of all countries, but with the idea of winning’.
Sadly the winning didn’t happen for Argentina; Russia are the 2006 champions. But as Piris said, it’s the taking part that counts.
