Inside The 7th Homeless World Cup. HWC Story By Uncle Monty.

Inside The 7th HWC.

Story By Uncle Monty.

HWC Photos By Alex Albion.

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- BREAKING NEWS -

UKRAINE CROWNED MILAN 2009

HOMELESS WORLD CUP CHAMPIONS

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My eyesight is pretty good for my old age, I think.
So I think I can honestly swear that I didn’t see one

single publicity poster or a city billboard at Italy's downtown

Milano announcing or publicising to its 1.3 million citizens that

the world sport event of the 7th Homeless World Cup (HWC)

was actually in town. And I went all over town, too, but I

still didn’t eye a thing about the presence of global homeless

football from 48 nations right in town. No, not a thing. True,

I saw alot of other great posters still on the city walls and

billboards and buses and trams and metro telling every-

body of the National Boxing Championships from the

previous week which was now past and finished at

Milano. The boxers had, after all, now gone back home!

In their place, football players from around the world

had arrived to vigorously play their international

games with good sportsmanship and good comradie.

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HWC Opening Parade at Milano, 2oo9.

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So did I get it all wrong or what? I don't think so

unless I am blind. The only local posters and small

billboards that I saw was right at the interior and exterior

of the stadium walls of the Civica Arena at Sempione Park
at where the 7th Homeless World Cup was played at the

official venue from 6th-13th, September, 2oo9.

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Without local publicity, such a venue is made dead

to the locals. Milano is a well-known Italian football

crazy city and such fans would have come in their

droves to watch street-rule football at the HWC had

they been made more aware of what was going on

right under their nose. I think HWC needs in future to

have a signed agreement with the host city to ensure

blanket publicity is secured and provided for at the local

and/or national levels at both before and during the

ongoing homeless games. Such seems certain not to

have happened at the Milano 2oo9 HWC from what

I personally saw and observed. Of course, I may

be wrong regarding such details between

Milano and the HWC.
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3 of 6 Italian Army Generals Overseeing HWC.

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My good eyesight didn't see any posters downtown, but

I certainly did eye the Italian military and her generals

festooning at the Milano HWC instead of the civilian police

being put in charge of stadium security. Why on earth would

you have such high ranking military officers - from the high

ranks of Brigadier-Generals to Major-Generals - being

involved in manning a sports venue of the kind the 7th

Homeless World Cup represents? Did the Milano civil and

military authorities expect a bunch of thugz or drunken and

savage football hooligans or what? Or did they expect a ragtag

of foreign rowdies ready to create violent havoc on the streets

of Milano or to riot on the open football stands or what? It

seemed to me that the Milano authorities had formed their

own pre-conceived and negative notions of homeless people.

Thus their prepared military response, if things for some

reason all went wrong with the foreign visiting homeless.

Nothing, of course, did go wrong. Why should it? The

players are groomed and honoured to be on their best

behaviour like they always are the HWC from the ones

I've seen at the far-flung cities of Melbourne to

Capetown to Copenhagen and to Milano. So there!!

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Such was quite vexing to me to see such military generals

being deployed at homeless football matches instead of on

the battlefields of war for which I assume they were first

trained!! I suspect they nursed war games in their heads

as they pondered over the harmless players from the

four corners of the earth enjoying the knowledge that

"a ball can change the world." Hopefully, such a ball can

also help to change the views of the generals toward

those who are homeless. In the UK, we know that 1 in

4 homeless people are actually ex-military. That should

resonate even with the top military brass of whatever

country they come from. At least, hopefully ...

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HWC Opening Ceremony.

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England's Homeless Football Team.
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Scotland's Homeless Football Team.
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Homeless Football Team of Wales.
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The Homeless Players Representing The USA.
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I noticed that almost every white Western European teams had homeless blacks or other minorities as team players. While teams from Eastern and Northern Europe did not have a single minority homeless player. And, all the African teams had no white players! The Asian teams had only Asian players as seen with teammates from Japan and Hong Kong. China was not represented nor, of course, North Korea, at 7th HWC. But one day they may be! The two homeless teams that defected or requested asylum at Melbourne last year - Afghanistan, the 2008 HWC crowned champions, and Zimbabwe - I didn't see at this year's world cup either. This year I also saw what appeared to be an overall increase in the actual number of homeless black players on the various teams at HWC than from previous years. As for homeless women players, there needs to be more present and encouraged and trained for future world cups. I believe, too, that the world homeless cup can be expanded to include other sports, aside from great football, at some further point down the road. But for now, football is the key sport and that is just fine for the world's homeless players of today and tomorrow.

On the HWC Football Stands. ...
Abit of Italian Pageantry at HWC.
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HWC's Own Elliot Stroud w/his good boss
HWC President Mel Young, before the first
Milano ball had been kicked off and scored!
Sport by its very nature is primarily for the young and physical. The Homeless World Cup is by its nature an endeavour to salvage the lives of the young and homeless. What such means is that the older homeless - those say over 35 years old - and those without any or little athletic ability due primarily to their age or individual disability, cannot hope to be included or participate in the HWC as a homeless team player for their country. Nor do they have a chance of benefiting from such a worthwhile and perhaps life changing experience that the HWC clearly engenders for many of the players on a personal and social level. My question is how can we apply to the older homeless some kind of program that will do for them what is now being done for the homeless young at the HWC? Certainly, any program that changes the lives of the young homeless is all for the good of the individual and for society at large. If the young stay homeless, they will grow to become the older homeless as they correspondingly grow physically old and emotionally more homeless. That's not good, period. I realise that the present older homeless, or those who are also rough sleepers, are tough customers to not only help but to change their lifestyle so that they can become a productive person both for themselves and again for society at large. How can you take something like the HWC and apply it then to those older folkz who are homeless and whose future at present is pretty dim? I don't know how you start such a thing or how it can be done. But I do know there must be something found that will help to reduce the numbers among the older homeless and rough sleepers! Such leading social entrepreneurs like Mel Young may be able to fathom out some sort of program that will specifically focus on helping those homeless who are no longer young or physical or athletic or even sports-minded. Mel also started The Big Issue Scotland, I believe, and he co-founded the Homeless World Cup. Selling steet papers can apply to almost any age group, but that doesn't do what the HWC does to radically change the condition and state of the homeless person to take personal steps to unbuckle himself from being homeless, being perhaps drug dependent, being perhaps a petty offender, being unemployed or jobless, being perhaps a drunken, and being a person without a fixed abode or a permanant roof over his or her head. Selling street papers doesn't bring care and love, but the HWC does in a very odd way. There is a sense of achievement, of belonging, of dignity and of worth, too, which doesn't easily come about by getting a couple of cold quid from some cold customer on the cold street buying a cold copy of The Big Issue from me the warm vendor. The HWC is then like a pot of gold for many players that brings about a deep desire and clear motivation on their part to change their old negatives into their new positives. If only that could be applied to all the homeless all over the world and for every age group, then a worldwide social revolution of the homeless is surely in the making! Let me stop myself now before I get myself carried away any further or sound more daft by the minute or coming over like a stupid old duffer!! I'm now crossing my fingers and my heart, nevertheless, in the hope that someone, somewhere, may fathom out some program or an answer for the global homeless based on something like HWC.
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These Guyz Were Real Talented!!

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The present Homeless World Cup, ironically, has already taken the first concrete steps to tackle the growing and pressing problem of global homelessness particularly among the young ... Well done!! Bravo!!! But how about the older and socially more difficult homeless men and women? Just a thought from me, who happenes to be an old critical fogy who was once homeless himself and who now goes around condemning inflated homeless charities and the like and especially those homeless spokespersons who needlessly live off the plight of the homeless with their false pride and sickening arrogance at the expense of the homeless and the marginalized. I make no apology for my harsh criticism and my open thoughts and my unequivocal opinions whether they're unpopular or not. One thing is very clear - I, without a shadow of doubt wholeheartedly support everything the HWC represents and is now doing around the world to combat global homelessness and to restore the dignity and worth and humanity of homeless people no matter what. "A ball can change the world," but the key is first to kick it and then to kick the evil enemy that is homelessness all around the world.

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I am now unexhausted, after a good night of sound sleep.

Thus, I have now finished my latest story - Inside The 7th

Homeless World Cup - with all my imperfections and oddity.

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I am also glad to now be back at home base after

the journey with Maria has taken us to Milano

and Moscow and back ...

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Cheerz, Uncle Monty.

+Eve of Holy Cross Day, 2oo9.

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...:: HWC UPDATE ::...

Dave Bidini investigates the homeless

world cup. Home(less) field victory.

By Dave Bidini, National Post.

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=1985781

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A: Hey. Canadian writer here, been to the last 2 HWCs.

Just wanted to drop you a note about yr great blog.

x db. http://davebidini.ca/

Sat 09/19/09 07:25 pm

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