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Meet the street children taking Egypt to the 2014 World Cup after all

Nine Egyptian children will fly the flag of their country at the Street Child World Cup in Brazil in March.

By Reem Abulleil

Egypt may have missed out on yet another World Cup but that doesn’t mean there won’t be a team representing Egypt in Brazil in 2014.

Right now, on a remote football pitch in Cairo, the world’s most beloved game is actively changing the lives of a small group of teenagers, each of whom is vying for a spot on the Egyptian team that’s heading to the Street Child World Cup next year.

This group of young footballers, 18 to be exact, have all had experience of living on the streets, but for almost a year now, have been regularly training with one eye on Rio de Janeiro, where the Street Child World Cup will kick off on March 27, 2014.

The first edition of the tournament - an initiative that was founded by the UK-based charity organisation Street Child United - took place in South Africa in 2010. It's aim was to provide a platform for street children to be heard and to challenge the negative perceptions and treatment of them.

In Rio next March, 20 men’s teams and eight women’s from across the globe will gather in the Brazilian city for a seven-a-side tournament with Pakistan among them.

VISIONARY

Last year, Egyptian investment banker Karim Hosny, who also co-coaches the football team at the American University in Cairo (AUC), heard about the Street Child World Cup while on a trip with his squad for a tournament in London, and it immediately struck a chord.

He found out the required criteria to qualify a team from Egypt and started working on making it happen. Eighteen months later, there is nothing that’s standing in the way of Team Egypt except paperwork to issue passports and visas for the players, and the money needed for the plane tickets.

With the help of three NGOs, I the Egyptian, Hope Village and Face, Hosny managed to find children who fit the criteria. They had to be between the ages of 14 and 16, have had experience of living on the streets, but have now been living in a shelter for at least a year.

Each child has a different story to tell.

One of them, Khaled, is 14 but found himself homeless at just seven years of age after his mother was arrested and jailed for dealing drugs. He worked on collecting plastic from the streets and selling it to factories before his sister eventually placed him at shelter with an NGO. He is now one of the 18 who have been training regularly with the Team Egypt hopefuls.

The challenges Hosny and his team faced were numerous, from dodging curfew hours to transporting the children, to finding available pitches for practice, yet somehow they are now a stone’s throw away from achieving their goal.

“It was quite tough with all the stuff that was happening in Cairo, but we were stubborn, we never cancelled practice for anything. Even the day (former president Mohamed ) Morsi was deposed, we still went to practice,” explained Hosny.

“It was a big fight. The general mood in the city was negative and logistically it was difficult. The curfew also didn’t help. But we kept going.”

LENDING A HELPING HAND

Helping him in the project and with training the kids are Mohamed Khedr – Hosny’s co-coach at AUC - Mohamed Abouhussein (Milano) and Morad Hakim.

They’re all volunteering their time and have been paying out of their pockets to finance the project so far. But Hosny says he truly believes in the impact this programme can have.

“We believe in the power of football,” says Hosny. “It brings everyone together it puts everyone on the same ground. It attracts and includes a lot of dynamics that we experience in real life, with the different positions on the pitch, the different characters, team work… it’s very powerful in teaching and rehabilitating.”

Indeed, the coaches can see the difference their programme has made with the children already. The NGOs usually struggle to keep the children in their shelters, but Hosny explains how they’ve been using their programme as an incentive for the kids to stay committed to a life away from the streets and the dangers that come with it.

“The aim is to change the perception of people towards street children. People look down on anyone living on the streets, but these children - it’s not their choice to be in this situation. So just bringing them together, giving them a reason to stay off the streets, qualifying them to the world cup and taking them to Brazil, this gives them hope, shows them they’re not forgotten,” he says.

Milano, who played for Paris Saint-Germain for four years before moving back to Cairo, says working with the kids has been like a dream.

LEGACY

He and Hosny are planning to create a foundation that can continue the work they’ve been doing, well beyond the World Cup. But right now, the focus is on selecting nine players from the group, to make the team destined for Rio.

“I love these kids, they really are a great group,” says Milano. “I got attached to them in a way I didn’t expect.

“Most of them didn’t know how to play at all and I wasn’t sure we had the coaching skills to lift them up but they proved us wrong."

For more information, visit www.streetchildworldcup.org. Follow the progress of Team Egypt on Facebook  and on Twitter: @SCWC_Egypt.