Homeless World Cup brings its message of hope to California
By Rachel Nostrant
(Reuters) — Hundreds of soccer players from around the world will step on to the pitch on Saturday to compete in the Homeless World Cup, an international competition held this year in California for people living without permanent shelter or in rehab centers.
The 40-team tournament, which runs from July 8-15 at California State University, Sacramento, is the brainchild of Homeless World Cup Foundation.
The foundation says it has more than 100,000 players in partner leagues across the globe. About 500 of those players will participate in Sacramento.
«Soccer is a unifying force, it's incredibly powerful and in my view, more generally, it really has a lot of power to tackle some of the most serious problems in the world,» said Mel Young, co-founder of the Homeless World Cup Foundation, which says it offers homeless athletes a community for support and seeks to erase the stigma of homelessness.
Homelessness affects nearly 150 million people worldwide, according to a 2021 report by the World Economic Forum.
To be eligible for the event, now in its 20th year, players need to have been homeless or in rehabilitation centers within the last two years.
The foundation said the players come from a range of situations: refugees, asylum seekers or people forced into shelters or on to the street because of a lack of affordable housing.
Fahrudin Muminovic represented Bosnia and Herzegovina at the 2019 Homeless World Cup in Wales. His father and 150 other people from his village were killed in the Srebrenica massacre in 1995, and he had since spent most of his life in refugee camps.
Sienna Jackson will play for Team USA. She grew up playing soccer, but family conflict forced her to rely on the goodwill of friends,
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