By Indranath Mukherjee

I was one among the lucky 5,154,386 people who attended the Fifa Fan Fests in Brazil during the 2014 World Cup. It reaffirmed my belief as to why the World Cup is the greatest show on Earth. In the same world, another football World Cup was kicked off on Saturday. The Homeless World Cup in Amsterdam, from September 2 to 19 will have 48 participating nations, including defending champions Chile, playing on this world stage.

This year in Amsterdam, the Homeless World Cup’s participants come from underprivileged sections of society, comprising mainly youngsters living in slums r ‘squatting’ on government land, those displaced because of natural disasters, and children of sex workers.

What started in 2003 in Graz, Austria, with just 18 countries, the Homeless World Cup today partners 74 countries with others eager to join. Mel Young, President, Homeless World Cup sees a clear trend in how the tournament is making an impact by breaking stereotypes. The work that he and his team are doing seems fairly simple: getting kids off the street and making them play football.

But the way their involvement is helping youngsters to build confidence and self-belief is remarkable. “The ultimate aim of the Homeless World Cup is not to exist, because we shouldn’t have to have a Homeless World Cup in the first place. There shouldn’t be any homelessness,” says Young, who urges people everyone to “do small things”. Why small things? “Because its simple and it works.”

In India, Abhijeet Barse has taken up the mantle of doing the ‘small things’. His father founded ‘Slum Soccer’ (slumsoccer.org) in 2001 in Nagpur to offer sporting opportunities and personal development programs to disadvantaged young people across India. Slum Soccer’s objective is simple: reach out to underprivileged Indians and use football as a tool for social empowerment.

Slum Soccer organises an annual national championship across multiple locations in India and out of the 16-18 participating teams, it selects 32 players every year. “Obviously football skill is a key criterion. But we also look at leadership qualities so that they can inspire the next generation of players from their area,” says Barse.

The selected 32 players go through a training and finally eight are selected for the Homeless World Cup. The Indian team is playing their seventh tournament in Amsterdam.

The Homeless World Cup teams could be all-male, all-female or mixed with a total of eight players. At any point in time, four players can play, with one goalkeeper and three outfield players. Substitution is done on a rolling basis. The format is of two halves of seven minutes each with a one minute break between each half. Teams play more than one match per day.

The same players can’t participate twice in the annual tournament.

There are eight groups in the men’s section this year, with Argentina and Brazil featuring in group A, and India in group G. In the women’s section, there are two groups of 8 teams each, India in group B along with USA and England.

If Chile defends their title at Amsterdam, they will be the first nation to win it for the third time. The other countries with two titles are Brazil, Italy and Scotland.

The two Indian teams have been coached by Andy Hook, development manager of Street Soccer Scotland, for a month before they flew off to Amsterdam. The Indian men’s side beat Norway 7-1 in their opening match on Saturday, while the women’s team notched up a 10-1 victory against Egypt the same day.

Each one of us could do our ‘small things’ by joining the supporters club of the Homeless World Cup (homelessworldcup.org/become-supporter/) and contribute to changing the lives of others. By using the Beautiful Game.

The writer is a founder member of Goalden Times, goaldentimes.org