Even if the obstacles seem to be insuperable, between a thousand misadventures and after months of referrals, sometimes dreams come true.
Today, we want to celebrate the World Refugee Day, just remembered on the 20th of June, telling you the successful story of integration begun in 2007, when a group of young people from Rome decided to found an amateur society as a pastime. Actually, the aim of this club was really high: to give, through sport, a home to people who are obliged to leave their own places and who are prevented from returning.
With that mind-set, the team grew so much so that the idea became reality: the Liberi Nantes was born, using the social colors of the United Nations.
The official name of the team, Liberi Nantes Football Club, was clearly inspired to Virgilio’s Eneide, as the team’s website explains: «The ships of the Trojan exiles fleeing from their city on fire, are shipwrecked and only a few among them – rare names – immersed in the great sea, managing to reach the shore. Among those survivors there are those who will found Rome “.
Everything has been started from the field of “Fulvio Bernardini”, just outside the capital, where the own A.S. Rome trains. At the beginning the objectives were really simple: the only desire of the boys, who meet once or twice a week, was just to be together and trying not thinking about their condition while they chase the ball around.
The motivation became so much relevant that lots of people got interested in the project.
In that moment the vision changed in order to realize a dream even more ambitious: to place the cards on the table for registration to the third category amateur champion, but the team could not participate officially, even because of the problem of the residence permits. The same FIGC allowed the team to partecipate to the league in the condition of “off the charts”: all games played by Liberi Nantes are equated to a friendly match.
That goal was only the first step to reach another significant point: the participation to the Antiracist World Cup and then, after 5 years, the possibility to play the final match in 2012, after a walk of 4 victories out of 5 in the group stage and 3 consecutive wins until the last race, lost with the score of 6-5 and, finally, the satisfaction for the “Cup of the Invisibles“.
“At the end 61 virtual points marked only on our site” as they commented after the event on their on web-space “but without the possibility to play the Regional Cups, without being officially recognized as second. Ideally, however, Liberi Nantes dedicates it to all the Invisibles and they are many in this country“.
The whole story has been recorded as movie that came out on 2013: “Black Star – Born under a black star”, in fact, tells the story of a group of immigrants who decide to play football, but who has to fight the distrust of the neighborhood, which calls for the eviction of the area thanks to an entrepreneur who wants her for her business.
This inspirational group of people demonstrated that sometimes money is not need to make our dreams true, but just the powerful desire to realize them.
#SportValues #GetVal #DreamComeTrue