Playing on the Integration League field, a story of friendship and sharing

In Reggio Emilia the heart of football beats fast and the participation to Integration League demonstrated once again how this sport can overcome borders and create indelible bonds, which keep on living outside the pitch.

Simone, born in Reggio Emilia and a 28-year-old metalworker, chose to join the team because he believes that football is a universal language of union. And in this, the tournament exceeded his expectations, opening a path that he hopes can be repeated.

Simone’s life has been steeped in football passion since he was a child. At the beginning, football was a way to share time with friends, then it became a game and sport. After he stopped playing, he started coaching. With Integration League he returned to the field in the role of goalkeeper, like Raffaele Nuzzo, former Reggiana goalkeeper and his coach in the past, who inspires him still today.

Simone met Saidy on the pitch, who has been living in Reggio Emilia for eight years now after leaving Gambia, his country of origin. Saidy, 29 years old, divides his time between school and his work as a bricklayer, Saidly thinks that football is a passion that crosses time and crosses borders. He started playing as a striker but after a knee injury he changed position and became a central defender. For him, inspiration comes from Moussa Barrow, a great striker for Al-Taawoun and the Gambian national team.

Both have found common ground in the Integration League where diversity is a strength, and friendships grow on the pitch. A tournament full of emotions in which football is fun and union.

Mohamed and Filippo, back to the field to follow their passions

Mohamed and Filippo, a left back and a defender, a friendship born from the meeting on the pitch for Integration League in the Francavilla team.

Mohamed was born in Ivory Coast but, when he was 17, left his country to come to Italy. After finishing his studies in eighth grade he has started to dedicate himself to professional football, which is his true passion.

Filippo, on the other hand, is originally from Francavilla and has always lived here. He also shares a passion for football but abandoned it at the age of 26 to dedicate himself to work and family.

The idols that guide them are many. Mohamed mentions Daniele De Rossi, Yaya Touré and Frank Kessie while Filippo remembers Jaap Stam. In fact, as a child his teammates told him they had the same haircut and so, through this form of closeness, a passion was born.

Mohamed and Filippo arrived at the Integration League with the desire to have fun, to create new friendships, but also to play well and demonstrate their skills.

And then, at the end of this interview they both declared that they hoped to win and, eventually, Francavilla actually raised the winner’s trophy.  A dream conquered on the pitch.

Gabriele and Camara, the opportunity to feel at home thanks to football

It is on the Integration League pitch that the friendship between Gabriele and Camara was born, who perhaps would have had no other way to meet if not thanks to their passion for football. Gabriele, a 36-year-old from Ancona, sales manager in a gaming company, and Camara, a 26-year-old who has found his home in Ancona since six months ago.

Among Gabriele’s passions are good wine and moscioli fishing, as per tradition for Ancona people. And then sport, football has always been part of his life: the words with which one of his first coaches explained to the best player in the team that without the other 10 on the pitch he would not have won anything still resonate in him. A lesson on team work that is valid on the pitch as well as off of it, in everyday life, and gives those who play a strength based on the ability to play together every game of life. Even if he hasn’t played football for a while, his inspiration is the legendary Javier Zanetti, the captain of FC Internazionale.

His choice to join the Integration League team is rooted in the profound belief that sport can be a tool for integration, just think of the bonds that are created in the locker room.

Next to him in the Ancona team is Camara. Football is his biggest passion, he plays as a right back and is inspired by the legendary Dani Alves, known for his extraordinary versatility and technical ability. His entrance into the Integration League team was fueled by his passion for football and the hope of winning together with his teammates.

Different origins and experiences that find common ground in Integration League. The chance to play again for Gabriele, the opportunity to create new bonds in his new home for Camara.

Once again Integration League is not just a sport competition, but a fusion of experiences and passions. On the pitch there are life stories, not just players, and the awareness that football can be a universal language that unites people.

Integration League, an opportunity of future
14^th June 2023

The one between Alpha and Gerardo is a meeting between generations, which reminds us that it is only by being there, by being together and sharing experiences, that new stories of integration and, future itself as well, can be written.

Gerardo is one of the strengths of the Potenza team, not only for his football skills but also for the personal experiences he brings to the pitch. In fact, this is his second project experience with refugees, after a journey linked to theater which had already allowed him to experience encounters with new cultures.

And Gerardo then brings with him a long experience on the football fields, after having played in the “first category “ ( seventh Italian football division) and also in the national junior team in Invicta Potenza. Now he finally plays with the Potenza shirt, a unique emotion.

Alpha, on the other hand, is one of the youngest guys on the team. He comes from Free Town, Sierra Leone, where his family still lives. Alpha, however, chose to change his life and so he faced a long journey that took him to Lampedusa about a year and a half ago, from where he then reached Brindisi and finally Riva Candida, where he now lives.

His life has completely changed but one still point remains, his passion for football. In Sierra Leone Alpha he played as a striker while in the new Potenza team he plays as a defender.

For Alpha and Gerardo – two generations compared, two apparently very distant life stories – the Potenza pitch was transformed into a training ground for life. The one in which to make oneself available and have the opportunity to write a new life story because as Gerardo tells us <<for the kids, Integration League can be an opportunity to show themselves, to point out their talent and maybe to open up to new opportunities.”

Lucio e Raimi, on the same side of the field playing for integration
June 13th 2023

Lucio and Raimi, an Apulian and a Nigerian, a defender and a midfielder, who meet on the pitch in front of a ball. They are two players of the team created by Monopoli for the Integration League, two life stories that have only one passion in common, that for the best known and most followed sport in the world. The same one that allowed them today to meet and share a playful journey that perhaps could also become a new friendship.

Lucio comes from Fasano but has lived in Monopoli for four years, where he studies physical education precisely to let sport be his profession.

Raimi, on the other hand, was born in Benin and arrived in Monopoli in 2015 and since then he has held various jobs, from agriculture to a bakery, up to his current job in an analysis laboratory.

More than 5000 kilometers between the concrete field of the Fasano oratory where Lucio spent endless afternoons running, kicking a ball, getting injured and laughing together with his peers, and the field where Raimi began playing, driven by the desire to become a great player like Jai-Jai Okocha – the former Nigerian midfielder included by Pelé in the FIFA 100, the list of the 125 best living footballers in the history of football.

«When you share the locker room, the time on the playing field, something beautiful necessarily born from it» – Lucio tells us, at the end of one of the Integration League training sessions, the project promoted by Lega Pro with the support of Progetto School and UNHCR Italy.

«Being together and sharing are three important words, in these training days we have dealt with people who come from different parts of the world and it’s nice because we have different cultures, different ways of thinking, everything is different. But then you go into the middle of the field and speak only one language, that football one.”

«We are all together, happy to play. This is what I like”, are Raimi’s words to describe the emotion of being part of this new team, an opportunity discovered thanks to a friend.

The life and travel choices of Lucio and Raimi arise from the same desire to have something more, to be able to study and build a future for Lucio, to have a dignified life for themselves and their family for Raimi.

For Raimi, obviously, the journey was longer: he crossed Niger, Algeria, the desert, Libya and then arrived in Lampedusa after four days at sea and from there he reached Puglia.

And perhaps the beginning of life in Italy is itself a new journey made of study, commitment, immersion in a new culture in which the difference is made by the opportunities for mutual exchange, those in which it is possible to bring one’s own value and not stopping just to receive. Just like what happens on the pitch, where everyone brings their contribution and the game only works if you move as a team. Isn’t this also the meaning of the word integration?

«Integration League contains everything that football can give. This sport has a power that we sometimes underestimate by thinking only of the economic aspect, but real football is rediscovered in these events – concludes Lucio. – I expect that the fundamental message, that of football, of being together, that we are all truly equal, will be taken into consideration. Thanks to football this can be done.”

On 5 July 1994, in the round of 16 of the World Cup, Italy-Nigeria ended 2-1 in the 102nd minute with a penalty from Baggio after a hard-fought match in which Italy was about to be beaten and which probably many still remember.

Who knows if that day Lucio and Raimi would have ever imagined that years later they would no longer be on opposite sides of the pitch but would wear the same shirt playing not for a World Cup but for an even more important goal.

Integration League, a second opportunity to dream with football

June 13th 2023

There are those who arrived at the Integration League by chance, but there are also those who confidently hoped to be in this team because this is where they saw their new possibility.

This is the case of Mariano and Samiullah, two destinies who found themselves united in the desire to win this tournament with their team: Cesena.

Samiullah is 22 years old, comes from Afghanistan and has been in our country for only 17 months. He left his homeland because of the war, after the arrival of the Taliban which in almost two years totally changed the daily life and future of a country and of the men, women and children for whom that country was home.

Samiullah designed dresses, elegant formal dresses, and sold them in his shop.

Also in Italy he works in the fashion industry, for a company that produces bags.

August 23rd, 2021 is the day he begins his new life in Italy and, the glue between his previous life and his current one is a great passion that has always guided the path of this 22-year-old: football.

And football is always what makes the heart of Mariano, 46 ​​years old, originally from Naples, beat.

Mariano arrived in Cesena 14 years ago and today works in sales management for a retail company.

He started playing football at 10 years old, thanks to a five-a-side football tournament organized by the company where his father worked. From here to the Napoli football school the pace is fast.

Then he starts playing in “Promozione” (sixth football Italian division) and goes on playing, until free time starts to run out and he has to become an amateur footballer.

Samiullah, on the other hand, started kicking a ball at 16 years old, in his city’s team and after a while he was selected by Pamir, an Afghan team with which he also won an important competition.

«There are many players that I like but most of all I am inspired by Ronaldo. He was very poor and in an interview they asked him: who is the best player in the world? He replied that it was him. Everyone laughed, but now it has become so” – Samiullah’s look is proud as he reminds us of this anecdote of redemption, of the ability to believe in oneself.

Mariano also reminds us of another pillar of Manchester United, who didn’t meet Ronaldo for a few years: «Peter Schmeichel, one of the greatest goalkeepers who also started playing with the ball at his feet. And then I am inspired by the legendary Garella, Napoli’s great goalkeeper, who with his saves with his feet led Napoli to win the scudetto.”

For Mariano and Samiullah Integration League is a tournament that embodies the beauty of playing together. The meeting of different cultures, the possibility of introducing oneself and getting to know each other, the opportunity to find oneself alongside people who have arrived from distant countries with difficulty, fleeing from racism and health emergencies. The key word that unites them is trust. The one to give to yourself, to believe in your dreams. And the one to give to those close to us, to allow them to show us who they are and what they can give us.

For Mariano, the integration League is an opportunity to return to play. For Samiullah it is the opportunity to demonstrate what he can do with a ball and build a new future. Each with their own goal, both united by the desire to win but even before that by the desire to play.