FOČA 09, the second European Street Football Festival is celebrating passion, fun and fair play on the streets of Foča, Bosnia and Herzegovina
20 May 2009 – From 20-24 May, young people from countries across Europe will come together in Foča, Bosnia and Herzegovina for the second European Street Football Festival. The festival is again organised by streetfootballworld (Berlin, Germany) and its network member Football Friends (Serbia; Bosnia and Herzegovina) together with the European Commission, Directorate-General for Enlargement.
The festival will bring together 24 teams, each consisting of eight young, amateur street footballers, representing organisations that work in the field of social development through Football. Each team will present an equal number of girls and boys aged between 14 and 18. Twelve teams will come from the EU member states: Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Poland, Portugal, Romania and United Kingdom. Twelve teams will come from South East Europe: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Turkey.
“The great success of last year’s festival inspired us to organise this sport event again”, noted Olli Rehn, EU Commissioner for Enlargement. “The Foča 09 festival is an excellent occasion to bring together young people from EU member states, candidate and potential candidate countries, to play peacefully and to have fun together. I wish you a great time and hope you will take some of the spirit of Foča 09 home with you.”
One of the highlights of the festival will be the visit of star player Stevan Stojanović, the former Serbian national football player and Red Star Belgrade’s star goalkeeper who captained their European Cup winning team in 1991.
“For streetfootballworld, the festival in Foča is once again a great opportunity to meet with our network members, to showcase their marvellous local work and to promote football as a tool for social development”, says Vladimir Borković, Network Director at streetfootballworld. Participants will attend workshops encouraging them to interact across language and cultural barriers. Through workshops on Fair Play Football, the participants will learn intercultural understanding, integration and positive conflict resolution on and off the pitch before they enjoy the highlight of the Festival – the Fair Play tournament.
Street culture activities such as freestyle football, beat boxing, DJ-ing and hip hop dancing will add to the excitement of the festival. The football matches will be played according to special fair play rules and without referees. The players themselves are responsible for calling fouls and resolving disputes through dialogue. “FOČA 09 is an opportunity to demonstrate hospitality in a way that can only be done by true friends, by sport and, especially, by football supporters and those who believe in European values” says Zdravko Krsmanovic, the Mayor of Foča Municipality.
