Zim ‘ready’ for Homeless World Cup
By Collin Matiza
With the 2018 Homeless World Cup soccer tournament six months away, Zimbabwe have already stepped up their preparations for this global showpiece with the news that an exercise to pick a team for this annual event will start in earnest in a couple of weeks’ time.
The Homeless World Cup is an inspirational week-long street football tournament that brings together more than 500 players representing 50-plus countries from around the globe, all of which have faced homelessness and social marginalisation.
The tournament attracts more than 80 000 visitors each year with millions more following the action online.
Mexico City was recently officially named as the host city for the 2018 Homeless World Cup and the Mexican capital will welcome more than 500 players from over 50 countries for a week-long festival of football.
The inspirational tournament will return to the venue of the sucessful 2012 event, the iconic Zocalo, right in the heart of Mexico City.
This year’s Homeless World Cup tournament will run from November 8-15 with more than 400 fast-paced games expected to take place across three purpose-built pitches and Zimbabwe, who have been a regular feature at this event since 2006, will once again be part of this football jamboree in Mexico City in six months’ time.
And Petros Chatiza, the programme co-ordinator of the Young Achievement Sports for Development who pick and run Team Zimbabwe for the Homeless World Cup, yesterday told The Herald that selection of the squad for this year’s event will start in a couple of weeks time.
They have also come up with a new selection criteria for the team.
“Although this year’s Homeless World Cup will be held in November, which is six months away, we have decided to pick our team early so that we do all the paperwork, including getting visas to Mexico, much earlier.
“And as you know, in the past years we used to pick our players for the Homeless World Cup from Harare’s high-density suburb of Hatcliffe but for this year’s selection we are looking at selecting underprivileged players from Hatcliffe, Epworth, Mbare (Matererini Flats area) and Hopley.
“In Mbare we will have a bias towards the players who stay in the Matererini Flats while in Epworth we will look for some of the players who took part in last year’s Mwalimu Kumbula soccer tournament (which is sponsored by one of that area’s most illustrious sons Musekiwa Kumbula).
“We are also looking at the logistics of doing a selection of those (street kids) living in the CBD area of Harare. We are looking for players who are 18 years old and above.
‘’We are looking at sending two teams of males and females or a mixed team but I think we would want a male and a female team. Each team will be made up of eight players.
“And this means that for this year’s Homeless World Cup tournament, we are likely to have a team of 16 players and four officials representing Zimbabwe and for our budget we need something slightly more than $30 000 for the airfares to Mexico,” Chatiza said.The Chronicle
