The Nobodies

Eduardo Galeano, one of the most prominent Uruguayan writers ever, once wrote;

“The nobodies: nobody’s children, owners of nothing.

The nobodies: the no-ones, the nobodied, running like rabbits, dying through life, screwed every which way.

Who are not, but could be.

Who don’t speak languages, but dialects.

Who don’t have religions, but superstitions.

Who don’t create art, but handicrafts.

Who don’t have culture, but folklore.

Who are not human beings, but human resources.

Who don’t have faces, but arms.

Who don’t have names, but numbers.

Who don’t appear in the history of the world, but in the crime reports of the local paper.

The nobodies, who are not worth the bullet that kills them”


Football Beyond Borders is far more than only football. It is our way to exist and resist. It is our way to stand by those who have seen oppressed their languages, their religions, their art, their cultures. It is our way of looking at the faces of those who seem to have lost not only their names, and are being killed not only by bullets, but by an entire system that has divided the world; into those who specialize in winning, and those who specialize in losing. Our message does not recognize borders, it goes from a shanty town in Paysandú to the little Farkha village in the West Bank, from the tumultuous Tahrir Square in Cairo to those cleaners of the University of London, from the endless struggle of the Kurds to the Helsinki Cathedral, from those always smiling faces of Accra in Ghana to the conflict-riven south of Lebanon, from a small community in the English countryside to those children playing football at the coast of Lake Victoria in Uganda.