By Clara Zimban.
Copyright EGBA KIROLAK.
“If you have ever seen me play football, you see why it means so much to me” explained William Blessing, a semi-professional player for the club Zalla in Bilbao. William arrived in Spain two years ago from Latvia where he was a professional football player targeted by racism. He did not speak the language when he arrived in Spain, nor did he know anyone in the country. To William, and many others, football has been the springboard to a new life in Spain – the foundation to his social connexions, professional opportunities and happiness.
The town of Sestao, in the autonomous community of the Basque Country, is home to the football club ‘EGBA Kirolak’, an association that significantly helped William, and many other young men in his situation. The association was born from the necessity to give a space and opportunities to the young, less privileged population of the town, in its majority, coming from immigrant background.
The impact of football.
Throughout my conversations with the players, and the founders of the club – Abiola Soule and Cardin Adrian, I started to understand that football is as much of a philosophy, as it is a platform on which to grow. EGBA KIROLAK has strived to magnify these characteristics of the sport through their activities as a charity. Many young men of the club do not have a stable housing situation in Spain, nor do they have family in the country. A lot of them have to live on the street for being in Spain illegally. To these young people in situations of distress, EGBA provides support either reaching to charities or help centres, or directly providing them a place to sleep, and food to eat. Through this, they are incarnating the ideals of fraternity and equality of the sport.
On a second level, the club helps these young people by the very mean of football – training them, managing them and providing opportunities to them. As such, they make their activities as a charity relevant, allowing the players to be in optimal conditions to play football. As a stranger to the football milieu myself, I, at first, wondered why football was so important in the vision of Abiola and Cardin.
For Abiola, the platform of football not only gives players professional opportunities in a competitive industry, but also a paramount form of education that will follow them for a lifetime. Football is valuable on all aspects of the development, giving players physical abilities, a capacity to work as a team, and qualities like self-discipline, respect of authority, and wisdom in failure.
The remaining challenges.
With this knowledge in mind, Abiola and Cardin still have to fight against structural issues in the football milieu. I had the chance to speak with Cardin about his story as a young immigrant wanting to live from football in Spain. “At age 14”, he said to me , “I decided that, in Cameroun, I couldn’t evolve in football, so I set off. I arrived in Spain when I was 15, I had no one here”. Cardin was recruited in a club as soon as he arrived. At 16 he signed his first professional contract. But being so young, and by himself in a foreign country wasn’t easy. Nobody explained to him what were his rights – from 16 to 21 years old, as a semi-professional player, Cardin had never seen a penny of his money, he wasn’t even aware that he was making any. His managers were taking his wage, renting Cardin’s apartment with it, and taking all the rest for themselves.
Today, EGBA KIROLAK, with the help of their local partners, (Sestao municipal government, Sestao Kirolak, Solidaridad International, Fundación Athletic) plays the essential role of adviser, manager and big brother to their vulnerable players; making sure that they know their rights. Their experience as African immigrants also makes them relate better to the young men they’re helping, and makes their support even more relevant and engaged. “As Africans”, Cardin said to me, “sometimes it’s like you’re from another planet”, “people always ask you to do more than average. If a Spanish kid has to give one hundred percent, an African kid has to give one hundred and fifty percent for the same opportunity”.
With EGBA KIROLAK, Abiola and Cardin are pushing their vision and ideal of what football ought to be on society. They are contributing to the incredible momentum of football by getting talented and ambitious kids out of the streets, by teaching them priceless lessons, and most importantly by making people come together, not only as a team, but as a city, as a community. In this small town of the Basque country, where grey buildings take up most of the landscape, football has let the young immigrant population feel relevant, adequate and included.
A broader movement.
Through their activities as a football club and their engagement in the social environment of Sestao, EGBA KIROLAK has been able to attract the attention of many regional actors. The municipal government of Sestao has been assisting the club in different tournaments and financially providing for different projects. Solidaridad international, an international organization, also supports the club in meaningful ways, providing Spanish classes and Spanish learning material to players in need to learn the language. Lastly, Fundación athletic, an organization that works directly with 'Athletic Bilbao Football Club', the first team of the province of Bizkaia, also supports EGBA KIROLAK in the context of a partnership. All this support is essential to the growth of the club and shows that the philosophy of EGBA, ‘futból para todos’ (football for everyone), is important to other key actors of the region. This involvement shows that football can be an arm of social change recognized by many. It also shows that important agents of change such as local governments and prestigious organizations are willing to acknowledge the challenges inherent to the football milieu, that need to be tackled. The EGBA movement is not yet to end, and would gladly welcome new partners willing to help them and their players reaching their great aspirations.
Written and edited by Clara Zimban.
Well written. Football is a Sport that unite people and comunities.