Spirit of Soccer Cambodia: An Innovative Approach to Fair Play

While Cambodia might not exactly be a world football power, eight youngsters from the Spirit of Soccer Cambodia program have become the darlings of the FIFA Football for Hope Festival. Even though they will not lift the championship trophy when it is awarded on July 10th as they have already been eliminated from contention after a string of tough losses, they have put themselves in a strong position to be the inaugural winners of the FIFA Fair Play Trophy.

With a mixture of strong football, laughter and smiles, Spirit of Soccer Cambodia has been receiving plaudits for its play on and off the field. All of this from a team that speaks hardly a word of English and had never left their country prior to this festival. They have proved that once the whistle blows, football is the universal language of the world.

Yet, for these eight youngsters their lives back home in rural Cambodia are threatened by the existence of landmines and explosive remnants of war. Cambodia is a country that still deals with landmines on a daily basis, with approximately six million of them still leftover as living remnants of the brutal Khmer Rouge regime.

Each of the participants selected for the squad attending the Football for Hope Festival comes from a family that has been affected or is at risk from landmines. This is certainly no laughing matter as around 250 people were maimed by landmines in Cambodia during 2009.

So what is the connection between soccer and landmines in Cambodia? Spirit of Soccer provides an innovative Mine Risk Education (MRE) program in collaboration with its free football clinics. After conducting a successful program over a ten year span in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Spirit of Soccer started working in Cambodia in 2006 and has been able to reach over 20,000 children each year. Child casualties from landmines has decreased by half in the three provinces that Spirit of Soccer has been working in over the past five years.

A member of the streetfootballworld family, Spirit of Soccer has also embarked on similar projects in both Palestine and Iraq, countries that also deal with the existence of landmines.

For members of the community who have seen the damage that landmines have done like coach Ly Heang, the program is literally a lifesaver. Coach Heang is a member of the delegation participating in the Football for Hope Festival and said that for the children “it is a great feeling to have hope and prospects for the future.”

For youngsters that deal with these heavy issues in their everyday lives in Cambodia, they have showed no signs of it during the festival. Prior to each match, a Spirit of Soccer player has given a traditional Cambodian scarf, a krama, to a member of the opposing team as a token of fair play and unity. It is these little things that the team does that has endeared them to their opponents as well as the South African crowd.

For a group of eight youngsters that had never left their country or been on a plane before, this journey to South Africa has certainly been an adventure, yet one entirely worthwhile for them. The festival itself has been a revelation for the team, with both the football they have played and the intercultural exchange that has gone on, yet they may have just made a bigger impact on their peers. With their model fair play, it is safe to say that Spirit of Soccer Cambodia will be one of the teams to keep an eye on in four years time, during the next Football for Hope Festival.