Feature: Football / Soccer
No.47
May 2006
 
  print view 

The World of Street Football: Colorful and Meaningful
Vladimir Borkovic



Afghanistan vs. England in the quarter-finals? Brazil against a mixed team from Israel and Palestine in the final? These are just two of the possible pairings at the “streetfootballworld festival 06”, the first ever Street Football World Cup to be held during the FIFA World Cup 2006™ in Berlin.
Based in the German capital, streetfootballworld, a worldwide network for street football, is organizing the “streetfootballworld festival 06” as an official contribution to the Artistic and Cultural Programme of the FIFA World Cup 2006™. 24 teams from all over the world will come together for eight days, July 2-8, in Berlin-Kreuzberg to demonstrate their street football skills in a specially-constructed street football stadium capable of accommodating over 2000 spectators. The participating teams are made up of girls and boys aged between 16 and 21 who participate in development projects in their home countries that aim to use football to promote peace, tolerance, education or fair play and end violence, drug abuse, poverty, or the spread of HIV/AIDS.
streetfootballworld establishes football contacts via the worldwide platform for street football which is a network they have been building since 2002, in co-operation with the International Council for Sport Science and Physical Education who is a partner in the scientific dimension of the game. Nowadays, over 80 projects, on all continents, are engaged in the streetfootballworld network with 24 of them sending their team to the “festival 06”. The network facilitates exchange of know-how between the projects, supports fundraising activities and strengthens the international movement of street and grassroots football through advocacy.
A deadly own goal provided the impetus for the establishment of the worldwide streetfootballworld network. In 1994, the Colombian national player Andrés Escobar was murdered following an own-goal committed during the World Cup in the United States – a fatal mistake. The murder led Jürgen Griesbeck, then a visiting lecturer in the Sport Sociology Department at the University of Antioquia in Medellin, to develop the idea of a street football project to promote dialogue between young people. In 1996, he started Fútbol por la Paz, a project bringing together violent youths who had turned to crime and victims of the conflict to play football. Within a year, there were 500 teams in Medellín and in parallel, many projects continued or started using football as an effective medium for social development of young people.
After Germany was chosen to host the 2006 FIFA World Cup™, Mr. Griesbeck founded the streetfootballworld project in Berlin, which has since become the worldwide platform for local street football initiatives and the promotion of the social dimension of football - the other dimension of the game. The “festival 06” is the culmination of this work and a stage to celebrate street football from every corner of the globe. Recently, the world’s football governing body FIFA and streetfootballworld united to form a strategic alliance for ‘social development through football’. The partnership begins with FIFA helping to stage ‘festival 06’, which will provide the world with a glimpse into the variety of street football cultures from as far away as Rwanda and Argentina and is planned to continue to be held every four years in conjunction with the FIFA World Cup™.
For more information on the festival ‘06, the participating teams, or the streetfootballworld global network, visit www.festival06.org or www.streetfootballworld.org
Contact:
Vladimir Borkovic
global network and research director
Sybelstraße 58
10629 Berlin
Tel: +49. 30. 7800 6248
Fax: +49. 30. 7800 6245
E-mail: borkovic@streetfootballworld.org





http://www.icsspe.org/portal/index.php?w=1&z=5