The Homeless World Cup: A Former Champions League Player and a Social Entrepreneur on Soccer's Transformative Power

When I was High School, Sturm Graz, one of the two teams of my hometown in Austria and the club I was born into, had its most successful phase. We made it to the CL group phase twice - and eventually went bankrupt from it. One of the protagonists was a young, serious-looking player from our own youth system who was known to be not your stereotypical soccer player. We were aware that he had a love for languages and philosophy. During the same period, in 2003, also in Graz, the first Homeless World Cup took place, on the city’s main square: 18 nations, 8 homeless players each, streetsoccer style on a small pitch. The tournament, its founders argue, has “The power to transform the lives of participants, and shape attitudes towards homelessness."  I would argue it also has the power to recenter the attitudes of soccer fans like us towards the power of the beautiful game. We hear from one of these founders today, Mel Young, a social entrepreneur from Edinburgh, Scotland who is president of the HWC til today. We also hear from that young, serious Sturm Graz player I watched growing up: his name is Gilbert Prilasnig, he now coaches Sturm’s under 18, but it turns out he began his coaching career at the Austrian Homeless World Cup national team, already during his active career as a player. He still coaches the HWC team now, making him Austria’s longest tenured national team coach. Please leave a quick voicemail with any feedback, corrections, suggestions - or just greetings - HERE. I also enjoy your comments and questions via The Assistant Professor of Football on twitter or facebook.  HELPFUL LINKS FOR THE EPISODE:Homeless World Cup websiteHWC on Wikipedia, with statistics on every tournament2023 Homeless World Cup in Sacramento, CANew York Times on the 2023 HWCUEFA obituary for Harald Schmied, HWC Co-Founder from Graz, AustriaThe Big Issue (streetpaper) on 20 years HWCMel Young's websiteNEW: send me a text message! (I'd love to hear your thoughts - texts get to me anonymously, without charge or signup) Please leave a quick voicemail with any feedback, corrections, suggestions - or just greetings - HERE. Or comment via Twitter, Instagram, Bluesky or Facebook. If you enjoy this podcast and think that what I do fills a gap in soccer coverage that others would be interested in as well, pleaseRecommend The Assistant Professor of Football. Spreading the word, through word of mouth, truly does help. Leave some rating stars at the podcast platform of your choice. There are so many sports podcasts out there, and only ratings make this project visible; only then can people who look for a different kind of take on European soccer actually find me.Artwork for The Assistant Professor of Football is by Saige LindInstrumental music for this podcast, including the introduction track, is by the artist Ketsa and used under a Creative Commons license through Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Ketsa/