Kicking violence into touch

Anyone who saw the Honduran U23 national team playing in the London Olympics in 2012 will know how passionate Hondurans are about football. Especially if you were at St James Park to see the victory against Spain and heard the cheering this provoked. Well, last week we weren’t in one of the glorious stadiums of professional football, but in the alleys of Tegucigalpa playing street football. This version of the game is about having fun. Mixed teams agree the rules and how they would like to play before hand and discuss how they did afterwards. Mediators, trained by the YMCA, help keep them on track. It is an easy and relatively cheap version of the game which YMCA hope to replicate all over the country. It follows on from a good experience which we had playing street football in Retalhuleu in Guatemala. It involves less diving and complaining that traditional football suffers from and adds up to a good day out.

We promised the Honduran President that we would help spread this concept of the spirit of football and are grateful to the Dirección Nacional de Juventud and the Programa Nacional de Prevención authorities who supported the programme. We were also grateful to the Ceverceria Hondureña who gave some soft drinks and some shade to proceedings as it is hot work playing in the Honduran sun.