In Africa, this passes for a football.
Tired of whinging, diving, preening footballers? Take a look at the selfless side of the sport.
Amidst Arjen Robben’s egregious dives and Torres/Fabregas pouting on the bench, it’s nice to look around and remember that not everyone associated with the sport is a 12 year-old (except for actual 12 year-olds).
Last year Athletes for Africa put on their first charity soccer tournament (starring Rivers Cuomo!) and raised $30,000 for a youth center in Uganda. This year’s version will be played at Lamport Stadium in Toronto (that’s Ontario. Canada, people!) on Saturday, August 14th. The first 16 co-ed teams to register (and pay the $360 registration fee) by July 23rd will participate in the tournament, with the team with the highest fund-raising total (teams are encouraged to ask for donations for Athletes for Africa above their $360) given first choice of a celebrity opponent.
Following on the theme of football in Africa, obviously the most important element of play on the pitch is the ball itself. No ball, no footy. One World Futbol Project, with the financial backing of Sting, has developed a ball which they claim “never goes flat, never needs a pump.” The ball is marketed as “all-terrain and indestructable”, reportedly even surviving play at the paws of a lion in the Jo’Burg Zoo. You can buy one for yourself or to be donated, but more importantly “for every ball purchased, One World Futbol Project is committed to donating a second ball to a non-governmental organization working with people who live in harsh environments around the world, including refugee camps, UN hot spots, conflict zones, inner cities and poor communities worldwide.”
Why is that ball necessary? Recently, photographer Jessica Hilltout embarked upon a journey that took her across 15,000km (~9,500 miles) in Southern and Western Africa for something she called Project AMEN. She brought “real” footballs with her, and gave them to as many children playing the beautiful game as she could, making sure to take pictures of all the substitutes that those children had been using. What she found was that “the beautiful game exists in its purest form in what I saw — people playing for the joy of playing.” That joy was multiplied immensely when these children, most of whom had virtually no other personal possessions, were given an actual football to replace their balled-up socks and grocery bags. The book is available in paperback and hardcover here [site is in French] for $24/$60 and takes approximately 1 week to ship.
So there you go – while watching spoiled millionaires run around the pitch this weekend, consider a few of these ways to spend your own money in an altruistic fashion.
We used to play with balled-up socks at recess in grade school. Not because we were poor, but because the school banned real balls when a teacher accidentally took a shot to the face. It’s fun to play with balled-up socks, but they unravel pretty often, which slows the game down a bit. I remember the 5th graders thought they would be clever and use their nascent paper mache skills to cover a ball so it wouldn’t be noticed by the teachers. This lasted about 30 seconds until the paper mache wrap fell apart and the teachers saw the real ball inside.