Members of Vancouver’s homeless soccer teams will play against a very different backdrop for their next few matches: the Eiffel Tower.
Soccer players from British Columbia make up the bulk of Canada’s men’s and women’s teams competing at the Homeless World Cup in Paris this weekend.
As 23-year-old Hector Valle preparing Tuesday for a 5 a.m. flight to Paris, said he feels like “a little kid” again.
“I just can’t wait,” he said. “I think tonight’s one of the longest nights that I’ve ever had.”
Like many of the B.C. team members representing Canada, it’s Valle’s first time at a world championship, and first time in Paris.
Sixty-four teams representing 48 countries will gather at the iconic Champ de Mars for the weeklong tournament, where players take the skills they’ve learned in street soccer games to the big leagues. The event is courtesy of local fundraising and corporate sponsorship.
Kurt Heinrich, an organizer for Vancouver’s Portland FC team on which many of the members play, said it’s inspiring to watch the players grow through sport.
“One of the neatest things we’ve seen is this transformation in many of the players who competed in Rio de Janeiro last year, who have now taken on leadership roles,” he said.
Canada’s team took home that tournament’s Fair Play Award.
Heinrich said the players, all of whom have been recently affected by homelessness, find community in the team, which helps foster friendship and allows players to reclaim skills they thought they’d lost.
“The one thing I like the most is our friendship,” Valle said. “We support each other in all the ways possible; we have become like a family to each other.”
Eight women and five men from B.C., along with four men from Ontario, will represent Canada’s entire contingent at the tournament.
