Homeless Football Teams Play Before European Champions Final – As Homeless Are Cleared From The Streets Of Cardiff

Homeless people played football on the same pitch as some of the world’s greatest ever players last Thursday. The match on Cardiff Bay’s floating pitch was one of the events ahead of Saturday’s Champions League final.

“It’s absolutely huge,” Keri Harris of Street Football Wales told the BBC. “It will be the same field, arena, where the day after a group of legends are going to be on the same pitch. It will help show homeless people are like everyone else, we are all just one step away. Being on the same pitch as famous footballers will help show they are human.”

Twenty players took part, before being whittled down to 16 for the Homeless World Cup in Oslo later this year. Wales will take men’s and women’s teams to the contest after £10,000 of Welsh Government funding.

The Homeless World Cup first took place in Austria in 2003, as a way of inspiring homeless people to transform their futures. About 50 voluntary groups and charities from around Wales then came together to create their own street football programme.

Teams include over-16s, with some that have become socially excluded through things like substance misuse, mental health or cultural issues, and suffered homelessness in the past year. Others had been long-term unemployed or spent time in jail and faced stigma and barriers to being part of society.

Ahead of Thursday’s demonstration match, Mr Harris said that street football has made a “life changing difference” to hundreds of homeless people and the prospect of playing in the world cup has inspired them.

Actor Michael Sheen is a patron, while minister for social services and public health Rebecca Evans said: “I met Street Football Wales recently and saw the difference their projects can make to people’s lives, not only in regards to health and wellbeing, but also in terms of self-confidence and personal development.”

Ironically, homeless people have reportedly been ordered out of Cardiff city centre ahead of the Champions League final. Several people living on the streets of Cardiff said police officers had told them to leave the city or potentially face arrest before the clash between Juventus and Real Madrid on Saturday.

South Wales Police said anyone behaving antisocially or causing harassment to others could be asked to leave the area for up to 48-hours under dispersal powers.

Officers could tell people to leave a certain area under Section 35 of the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014. The section allows police to order people to leave a certain area for no more than 48 hours to stop any antisocial behaviour or crime. Failure to comply is a criminal offence and doing so could see people landed with a fine or imprisonment of up to three months, according to the Crown Prosecution Service.

Homeless Vicky Berry, 29, from Pontypridd, told the Daily Mirror: “I’ve been told that I have to move on, and that we have to go for four days and we are not allowed in. I do understand that with everything going on there is a security problem, but chucking homeless people out isn’t the right thing to do.”

“I haven’t got a clue what I’m going to do.”