Blend it like Beckham

Seán Kennyon how a mixed football tournament in Bosnia-Herzegovina united races, creeds and the sexes. And they played by their own rules.

IT'S INTERNATIONAL football, but not as we know it. Here is the game played with the raw immediacy and knees-and-elbows jostle of the playground. The ball zings across the tight, concrete pitch and Kerri Ryan from Dublin scores with a thumping shot from inside her own half. The man from BBC World Service commentating could not be more excited were he describing a European Championship match.

Ryan was playing for the Sport Against Racism Ireland (SARI) team at the inaugural European Street Football Festival, in Foca, Bosnia-Herzegovina from May 22nd to 25th. She was one of seven players aged 14 to 18 representing the organisation. The mixed-gender, mixed-race team comprised two players from Northern Ireland and five from the Republic.

Football was the magnet drawing 24 teams from around Europe and the Balkans to Foca '08. Twelve sides came from the former Yugoslav republics of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, Macedonia and Serbia, the others represented a scattering of European countries as far-flung as Latvia and Portugal.

Football was the means for drawing together groups dedicated to social development. From Hull, came Dads Against Drugs (who missed their hometown team's promotion to the Premier League to be at the tournament). There was Strassenfussball Fur Toleranz, a joint German-Polish delegation, Fotbal Pro Rozvoj (Football for Development) from Prague. And so on.

"I think football is really suitable because everybody in any part of the world, from Iceland down to South America, knows what a football is and what to do with it," says Sari coach Louise Brown.

For 15-year-old SARI player Thomas Carroll from Kilbarrack, the tournament represented a unique opportunity: "Even on our team you've white and black people mixing together, and you get to know them all. And there's all the other countries. We got on great with the Portuguese and the English. You know the way the Irish are supposed to hate the English . . ." he laughs.

The tournament operated on a fair play basis, with games refereed by the teams themselves. Fouls were called by players raising a hand to halt play. Wonder of wonders, the system appeared to run quite smoothly.

Frank Buckley, founder of SARI, was impressed by the fair play rules and the lessons they imparted. "If you're a 13- or 14-year-old kid and you're introduced to this kind of structure, when you're 17 or 18 it'll naturally come to you not to kick a guy on the ground, but pick him up."

Carroll was struck by the smoothe way the fair play rules operated. "I didn't think it'd work out. I thought they'd just keep playing on when you raised your hand but people are playing fair play and it's good. And after a match you go off with the other team and you say to each other: 'Was it a good game? Was there anything you didn't like?' Then you'll say: 'Keep playing, you're doing well, I hope you win something'. There's a good atmosphere."

For Foca, a town of 40,000, 70km southeast of Sarajevo, the festival represented a renaissance of sorts. Up until 1992, Foca hosted a prestigious annual youth tournament in which the former Yugoslavia's top professional clubs competed. That competition, like so much else, was chewed up in the jaws of war when conflict broke out in Bosnia in 1992. The scars left by the fighting are referred to only obliquely by the tournament's primary organisers, Streetfootballworld, but they hover behind the bringing together of teams of different ethnicities from around the Balkans as part of the festival.

In Sarajevo, Bosnia's violent recent history can be traced in the still bullet-pocked walls buildings around the city. Along the main road to Foca, small clusters of memorial stones rise from grassy verges like disturbing punctuation marks. Against this backdrop it is hoped football can do some good in bringing communities together.

Vladimir Borkovic, one of the tournament's organisers, makes the case for football as an agent of change in the region. "It's something I was not able to imagine. But, as you know, there are different communities living in Bosnia-Herzegovina, living around Foca. And if you see those young players of different ethnicities, different nationalities playing together on one pitch and by self-established rules, I'm very much pleased to see it.

"And I do believe in the future of Europe when they come together after the very difficult experiences that their parents, their families had in the past. They are using a simple method, just playing football.

"I'm very pleased we have realised something like this in a region that very much needs it. It needs colourful events. It needs friendship. It needs opportunities to show tolerance."

Louise Browne, a previous visitor to Bosnia-Herzegovina, was struck by football's significance in the region. "Yugoslavia was a big hub of football anyway in its heyday. They had some great teams, even at international level. I think they're trying to use it as a tool to get people, not necessarily talking to each other, but playing against each other, and hopefully they'll cross over again. There's a big significance to this tournament being hosted here."

Borkovic argues for football's general suitability in promoting social development.

He concedes its limitations too: "Development is possible by different means. One of the means we use is football because we believe in its popularity, in the strong message it can deliver. But we are not naive to think it can solve all problems. We just know it can be an initial move and a signal for different youth populations throughout Europe and the world."

As for the SARI team, they won some and they lost some and they soaked up the whole experience. They attained temporary celebrity among the autograph-hungry gaggle of local children swarming the festival site. Foca, you sense, has rarely been such a focal point of positive energy.

For Frank Buckley, the experience has set him on the scent of a new SARI project: "I think a lot can be learnt from here in Northern Ireland.

"We all say the peace process is happening but if you go to west Belfast it's never been more divided.

"I've linked in with groups here and asked them if they're interested in coming to Northern Ireland for a similar event next year and they're all for it."