Street Football: Cutting Soccer Down to Size

The sheer speed of this new breed of soccer is an intimidating sight. Under a burning midday sun, ten players at the Streetfootballworld Festival ‘06 compete at a pace that pushes the eye’s ability to take in the action. They’re playing for fun and representing the football related network of charities that Streetfootballworld brings together, but tell that to the sprinting, spinning, shooting, sliding, players moving in a blur that belies the heat radiating from every surface baking in the sun.

Games last 12 minutes on a pitch the size of a tennis court and can see nine or ten goals. Play starts from a throw in by a neutral party on the sideline much like table football or foosball. The only rules are that each team gets five to its side and the ball is always in play. Beyond that teams negotiate their own rules with the other squad before the game. Sometimes goals scored by girls count double. Sometimes teams agree on substitution patterns. The games are intentionally unstructured.

There are no refs on the field and the players must resolve any disputes. A third party can mediate the discussion but the players come up with the solution. It’s a bold experiment and Bert Leonard of the USA coaching staff said he was surprised that it has worked so well. Now that he’s seen it works he sees that the players really just want to play, he said.

In fact, the competitions are a mad-dash to cram as much soccer as possible into a truncated game. Goal celebrations last as long as it takes the goalie to dig the ball out of the net and with the ball constantly in play, most teams try to get a shot off within a few seconds of being scored on. Afghanistan vs. Senegal saw three goals in thirty seconds.

It’s like a boxing match in a phone booth.

Or, more accurately, it’s like a World Cup gone miniature, with aspects of the bigger tournament present at a fraction of the size.

As microcosms go, this one is pretty complete. 22 teams from around the world compete instead of the 32 World Cup teams and the tournament takes place over one week instead of one month. The pitch is a basement sized box in a stadium made out of scaffolding that seats 2,000 instead of 50,000 people. FIFA is a background sponsor, sponsoring several of the different football programs without making the event the “FIFA Street Football tournament.” Jürgen Klinsmann is a spokesman for the program and admission is one Euro.

Some things don’t change though. Teams from Latin America are quick and skilled and instinctively call for fouls. African teams are all leg and often kick at their opponent’s feet. Poland and Germany play a more physical style, using their thicker build to move opponents out of the way. A Spanish-language announcer revs his mouth to red-line RPM’s doing play by play. Team USA has trouble scoring.

It’s like Formula One in a cul de sac.

Except that the tiny space neutralizes flat out speed. Ball control and quickness become paramount. Girls share the field with boys and while they do usually mark each other, they score their fair share of goals.

On the field, without any rules or refs, the tournament has the feel-good, idealistic atmosphere of an after school special. The festival adopted FIFA’s Fair Play campaign and the announcers throw the catch phrase out there at every opportunity. “Lets see some Fair Play out there today!” Much of the audience on this Monday afternoon are grade school age kids and their parents, so it’s entirely appropriate.

In the real world, though, most pick up game arguments are resolved because one team has a guy who talks the loudest and no one wants to argue with him. He can change the score, or possession whenever he wants and is highly valuable to a street football team. This doesn’t really work with 2,000 spectators and the international media in attendance though.

The media has flocked to the Streetworldfootball Festival. The stadium is packed with mainstream press, the combination of football action and altruism proving to be seductive feature fodder. Along with the values of Fair Play and sportsmanship, kids are learning that members of the media really do wear those tan vests with all of the pockets.

In fact, on closer inspection, the entire event is designed to foster press attention. Having issued 500 press credentials for a stadium with a max capacity of 2,000, a quarter of the crowd is there to film, record or write about it. Inter France Radio, Deutsche Welle Radio, Rocketboom.com, Arte Television, BBC, CNN. Two separate crews filming two separate documentaries…

The media has total access all the time and the configuration of the seating is such that the players and fans can’t help but interact with each other in front of the cameras. Ryan Mykta, a volunteer with the USA team, said that giving fans access to players makes them feel like they are part of the event and was done on purpose.

The teams do not have locker rooms, they change down the street at an elementary school that has been converted into player’s barracks for the week, but the press-room is a large, multi-room setup with free drinks, snacks and wireless internet.

Not that the players really need the space, they play two 12 minute games a day, and USA goalkeeper Sean Johnson said that despite all the diving around, he doesn’t even get tired in such short games.

It’s like a sprint to the starting line.

It all points to the fact that that none of this is really about the football or the teams competing for the chance to have 1994 Colombian World Cup team captain Carlos Valderrama present them with the same trophy that Italy will compete for against Portugal or France on July 9. Instead, it’s designed to bring international attention to football based charities like Atlanta’s Soccer in the Streets (No Drugs, No Crime, just Soccer in Atlanta) Kenya’s Mysa project, Nairobi’s “Search and Groom” AIDS education, Senegal’s program teaching youths both football and life skills, the Balkans efforts at using football to increase intercultural dialogue and social interaction after the Balkan wars, and even a team from Tel Aviv, comprised of players from both Israel and Palestine who represent the Peres Center for Peace.

By bringing teams from Senegal and Kenya to Germany, Mykta said, the programs earn credibility and the kids get to have a great experience.

But again, try to explain that to the players, some of them top-level athletes who are, “out there to kick some ass,” as Mykta put it.

Several members of the team play soccer in college, others are simply not old enough to know their future with the game. Leonard said that Team USA’s goalie is going to play at Duke.

“He’s really good, he’s excellent,” Leonard said. “It’s just tough for him to get down low enough for these goals.”

Johnson’s 6′4″, lanky build leaves him at a slight disadvantage in the low-to-the-ground game of street soccer. The high scoring and intensity of the games puts a lot of pressure on the goalies and Johnson takes it pretty seriously. “I hate losing,” he said after their first game of the day. “Outside of this it’s really fun, I just hate losing.”

To try to stimulate the offense, Johnson came up with the somewhat controversial strategy of skipping the progression up field and just throwing it ahead, lobbing untouchable parabolas to his teammates standing in prime scoring position. “It works, we’re just not really on the same page quite yet,” he said of his passes.

Team USA has not been on the same page for the first two days of the tournament, producing one goal in two games. Having lost both, they face elimination and a stiff goal differential heading into the final game of the day.

They’re playing Colombia, their closest friends in the tournament and, perhaps not coincidentally, the team with the most girls on it. The two sides negotiate the rules and reach an agreement. Team USA’s lone female member, Lauren DuBois, will play the entire game and Colombia will be free to substitute at will. Goals scored by female players will count double.

This game is dedicated to Andrés Escobar, the Colombian defender murdered for the own goal that knocked Colombia out of the 1994 World Cup and whose murderer was released from prison last year after serving 11 years of his 26 year sentence. In the first minutes of the game, the Colombian goalie kicks the ball on the ground and it slides next to a Colombian player’s foot, hidden from view. Johnson, in the USA goal, doesn’t see the ball in time.

It’s the first time a goalie has scored that day and there’s a certain level of symmetry or balance to the fact that the goalie scored the first goal of a match dedicated to the repercussions of an own goal.

Down 1-0, USA has an uphill battle ahead of them, but the sun has gone down now and the USA strikers look energized playing against their friends. They put in two goals and a goal by DuBois puts them up 4-1. After 12 minutes the game ends ends 5-2, which makes up the goal differential and buoys the player’s hopes of advancing out of their group.

But the schedule does not include celebration. Only showers, a change of clothes and a large bottle of water for everyone before loading into vans and driving to the fan mile where they are featured on the main stage as part of the festival’s third of July tribute to American culture.

Afterwards, the team gathers off stage and talks with those at the fan fest who come by to talk. They are mostly young women, a few years younger than the 16-20 year old team from Atlanta. They pose for pictures and sign autographs on everything from graph paper to skin. The team deals with it the best they can, staying cool and trying to find a common language with the pretty girls, but they’re not prepared for this. Joseph DuBois didn’t even know that he was headed onstage when he got into the van. But he said he’s getting used to the attention from the press and the fans.

It’s like they’re celebrities.

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