The Soccer Tournament With No Referee in Sight

250 teenagers from all over Latin America took part in a soccer tournament with a twist in Montevideo, Uruguay this Tuesday - this is street football, where the teams' behavior on the pitch is just as important as the number of goals they score. It's part of a growing international movement - using football as a tool to teach young people to respect one another.

Published

7 months ago

Categories

Sports

Topics

Youth Sports

Places

Peru, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Montevideo

Transcript

SHOTLIST: MONTEVIDEO, URUGUAY, 30 OCTOBER 2012, SOURCE: AFPTV (Access All) SCRIPT: Kids playing football in the street is a common sight across Latin America; but these 250 children from across the continent haven’t travelled to Uruguay just to see who can score the most goals. In Street Football, good manners and mutual respect matter just as much as getting the ball into the back of the net. Vox Pop 1: Guilherme Wantsin, Brazil, age 14 (10s, Portuguese) “Street football isn’t the same as traditional football, where you can shout and insult people, it’s not like that” (“El fútbol callejero no es igual al fútbol tradicional, donde uno puede insultar y gritar, no no, no es así”.) VoxPop 2: Yislaine Arellano, Chile, age 14 (4 s, Spanishl): “The idea is that there’s sportsmanship, friendship, respect” (“La idea es que haya compañerismo, amistad, respeto”.) This is the fifth Latin American Street Football tournament – part of a movement that’s spreading around the world and says it counts 600 000 young players in 60 countries. Here there are teams from Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Brazil, Ecuador and Argentina. In street football, there’s no referee - the teams make up the rules themselves and vote on them before kick off. SOUNDBITE 1: Nelly Jara, street football organiser from Peru (7s, Spanish): “There’s just a mediator who helps to organize communication between the two teams.” (“Solamente hay un mediador que es la persona que ayuda a generar la convivencia, la comunicación entre los dos equipos”.) The idea is that football can be a tool to promote respect for the rights of others – and fight discrimination - here, all teams need to field both male and female players. SOUNDBITE 2: Nelly Jara, street football organiser from Peru (10s, Spanish): “Including women in the team means there’s a space for them as well, isn’t there? They can play alongside the men, and they’re respected not only on the pitch but also on it, aren’t they?” (“Ahora incluyendo a la mujer es como darles también el lugar a ellas, ¿no? Ellas también pueden hacer lo mismo que los hombres y sobre todo con el respeto que no solamente se daría en la cancha, sino también se da fuera de ella, ¿no?”.) In many Latin American countries, street football is also being used to stop young people getting involved in crime and violence. . SOUNDBITE 3: Cynthia Jorge, street football organiser from Argentina (14s, Spanish): “For the kids at my club, in my town, there are lots of cases of kids taking drugs, or becoming parents at a very young age, and really, football has helped them a lot” (“Como me pasa con los chicos de mi club, de mi barrio, hay muchos casos de chicos que se drogaban, otros que son padres a corta edad, y la verdad que el fútbol los ayudó mucho”.) After the games, its the players themselves who vote on the winner – the team who has best followed the rules – so in street football, it really is not the winning that counts – but the taking part.